Add-on controllers and processor load when using writer

[Savant]

Hi folks,

I was previously using two burners, one internal and one external firewire. No problem with this and processor load was quite reasonable.

However, I wanted to add another burner, and so I decided to pick up an add-on controller card. I decided to go with a simple 'Promise Ultra 100 TX2' and bring the external drive into the machine to consolidate devices and cut down on the noise of the tiny fan in the external bay.

When I did some testing I found I was getting buffer under-runs on the remaining drive that is connected to the internal IDE controller. Through testing I found that when writing to through the Promise controller, the burn works OK, but processor load spikes over 90% (often at full load) and stays that way throughout. Compared to the under 50% for internal IDE devices, this just isn't any good for me.

So I'm wondering if anyone else here uses their burner on an add-on controller? (I'm talking about INTERNAL units here, devices that provide IDE functionality inside the PC - not external or firewire based devices)

I could swap a coupleof my hard drives over to the Promise. (I have three hard drives so I only have one spot left for a writer on the internal IDE controller) However, I'll still have the issue of two writers on the same channel, which can cause issues.

I'd love to know how other people are deaing with the issue of too many drives and not enough controllers. What's your preference?

Regards,

Savant

[budz]

I have a maxtor ide controller on this pent 3 933 pc. I have the burner and dvdrom attached to the motherboard ide. I would suggest you not use the controller card for the dvd burners. For some reason some optical drives don't work properly with controller cards. I have the maxtor ide controller card connected to my 2 hard drives. As I've mentioned the dvd burner, cdrw & dvdrom are attached to the motherboard ide's.

The only problem I can think of having 2 dvd burners on the same ide is that you can't do copy on the fly. I don't do copy on the fly so it's not a problem for me to have the dvd burner and dvdrom on the same ide.

Perhaps you may try using the controller card for just your hard drives. On my pent 4 2.4 pc I have another controller card but it's only used for my cdrw. I tried hooking up my 2 hard drives to it then used the motherboard ide for the dvd burner on primary master ide and slave dvdrom, I had errors when burning dvd media. So I use the controller card for just the cdrw. Everything else is connected to the motherboard ide's.

[redwudz]

I use the TX2 also, but I use it just for a DVD ROM and a backup IDE HD. I have 4 IDE HD's (2 are RAID0) a DVD burner, CD RW, DVD ROM, Zip drive. No issues with speed on any of the drives, or high CPU usage. Never tried the DVD burner on the TX2, because I got it more for the DVD ROM.

I haven't seen any problems with having a DVD burner and a CD burner on the same IDE bus. That was more of a problem with older boards and older controllers. I haven't seen any real difference what I've put where. I still keep my boot drive as master on IDE 1, but except for that, I tried other configurations and just about everything has worked.

A note for people thinking about a add on PCI controller. If you plan to use it for slower speed devices such a DVD or CD drives, make sure it is compatible with them. The TX2 can do this but some IDE 133 or 100 controllers will not work with the slower IDE 33 or 66 devices such as CD or DVD drives.