Pioneer DVR-104. Is it ok to connect this way?

[Maco88]

Bought a DVR-104 and about to install in my system. I am thinking about removing my old CD Writer and putting in the DVD writer in its place as it does everything the CD writer did, plus DVD-R/W.
My question is I will be having my DVD-ROM daisy-chained on the same IDE controller/cable. The Writer will be Master and the DVD ROM is on the Slave.
All good so far but Pioneer recommend that for best results the DVD-Writer be set up as Master and NO other device daisy-chained on the same IDE controller.

Ouote from Pioneer website - Ideally it is best to have the DVR Writer connected to the second IDE port with it set as a Master (MA) and no other drive or writer daisy chained to it.

Your advice/opinions and experience with the above would be appreciated

Cheers

[bugster]

I have run a Pioneer 103 (slightly earlier model) as both master and slave always paired with either DVD-rom drive in one syetm or a CD Writer in another system and NEVER had a failed burn or any other problem

[Craig Tucker]

I also have mine on the same IDE channel as my CD burner.

[miketree]

I have a 104. I have hd + cdrom on 1 ide and hd + 104 on the other. No problems.

[Craig Tucker]

You would be better off having both hard drives on the same channel. The problem with your configuration is that the maximum speed that both devices can operate on 1 channel is goverened by the slowest device. So your hard drives are being dragged down to the speed of your CD/DVD drives. This is a big no-no particularly if you do any video capture.

[bri2366]

what do you mean by being dragged down in speed exactly?
the reason I ask this, I have an 80gb harddisk running at udma100, and a mitsumi 32x writer on channel 1, and another 80gb on channel 2 along with my pioneer 104, I have ran SiSoftware Sandra 2002 Professional which reports the drives running very close to what they are supposed to run at!
so you have me a little confused about the cdr and dvr dragging the ide devices to the same rate as them??
I have burned over 200 dvr's using this configuration with no coasters!

[Craig Tucker]

I mean the data transfer rate of cd drives is much lower than that of hard drives. If you have a CD drive and a hard drive on the same channel, the data transfer rate of the hard drive will be slowed down to that of the cd drive. This will in no way effect your ability to burn cd's as the performance of the cd drive isn't affected. But it may well cause a hard drive to drop frames during capture because of its limited (by the cd drive) data transfer rate.

For example I the pioneer a04 supports ultra-DMA mode 2 (ATA33)
If you have it on the same channel as an ultra-DMA Mode 5 (ATA100) hard drive, this hard drive will be limited to the ultra-DMA mode 2 (ATA33) of the DVR a04 drive,

[greig2000_uk]

I have my IDE 1 with 2 X 40Ghz HDD's @7200rpm and #2 with Philips 8X writer and Mitsumi 24X writer and the only thing that drags speed is writing on the fly on IDE 2, same config in my old PC case was like Bri2366 and I preferred it to what I have right now, so when my Pioneer A05 comes it will be going on IDE 2 as slave to my D: master.

@Bri2366: 200 dvd-r's? you like peer 2 peer then...? lol

[Craig Tucker]

I have my IDE 1 with 2 X 40Ghz HDD's @7200rpm and #2 with Philips 8X writer and Mitsumi 24X writer and the only thing that drags speed is writing on the fly on IDE 2, same config in my old PC case was like Bri2366 and I preferred it to what I have right now, so when my Pioneer A05 comes it will be going on IDE 2 as slave to my D: master.

@Bri2366: 200 dvd-r's? you like peer 2 peer then...? lol

This is of course down to personal preference and depends greatly on what you use your PC for. IF you change your configuration as you have said you will be limiting the performance of your hard drives. But then if you dont require high data transfer for you hard drives, then you probrably won't even notice. However, you would almost certainly notice if you did any video captue, by the increase in frame drops. If you mainly use your PC for on the fly writing then it is indeed better to have them on different IDE channels, in fact it used to be a necessity a couple of years back when everything was that much slower.

[bri2366]

this is the part which I find confusing! as I said in my previous post!
I ran a benchmark on my drives! and I dont have a problem with large transfers rates! I can tranfer data from one hard disk to another at a rate of 80mb to 100mb a second???
but anyways! my system seems to be working at near enough peak performance! no problem with frames being dropped or anything when capturing video! so not much point of finding a cure for a problem that isnt present anyway! just wonder what your comments on the subject were!

[Craig Tucker]

Taken from here Bottom of the page.

Q: What is the recommended configuration for my IDE devices?

A: You should put your hard drives on the primary channel and your slower devices such as IDE CD-ROMs, or IDE tape drives on the secondary channel. This is because Section 2.3.1.1 of the EIDE guide states that high speed PIO or DMA transfers is recommended, but is NOT REQUIRED for the secondary channel.

This is why hard drives should only be put on the secondary channel if you need to add a 3rd IDE hard drive

Many of the high speed features of Enhanced IDE such as Busmastering, DMA scatter/gather transfers, 32 bit PIO transfers, and high speed DMA transfers are not required and not present on the secondary channel.

Many of the current Enhanced IDE controllers do not support separate transfer speeds of the slave and master, so if you have a fast master device and a slow slave device on the same channel, your controller may lower the maximum transfer speed to the slowest device.