Multiple DVD burners in my new system

[miston]

I'm putting togethe a new computer, and want to get 3 writers. I'm hoping I wil be able to burn 3 cd's at once, and at the very least load up 3 DVDs/CDs on my computer, sit back on the couch with my laptop using PCAnywhere and start the burning on my desktop in the other room once the one disc get through. I know, but I burn a lot of music for friends (Grateful Dead, Phish, Panic) and each show is 3 discs, and to motivate myself this is what I want to do.

Can I get 3 identical drives or would it be better to get 3 different drives. I kind of wanted to get 3 plextor drives.

Do you think I would be able to burn 3 CDs at once, or 2 DVDs at once on the following setup:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600 Dual Core
2 GB RAM
OS drives: 2 WD 10,000RPM Raptors on RAID 0
Storage drives: 2 WD 400GB Raid Edition on RAID 0

[redwudz]

If you are burning 3 different DVDs or CDs at once, that would depend on your burning software. If the files are the same, as in multiple duplication, Nero can use multiple burners.

Just my opinion, but I wouldn't recommend RAID 0 on a boot drive. One drive crashes and you will have to reinstall the OS. RAID 1 would make more sense there, though a super fast boot drive won't do much more than load your programs faster, not much effect on the running speed of a program. Just watch your drive lights while a program is running. How much disk activity do you see?

I gave up on RAID altogether. Most newer drives, such as SATA II are plenty fast and having more than just a boot drive and a secondary drive is helpful. I use 4 separate SATA drives. Boot, Edit, Archive, and Backup. Makes for a much better work flow.

For video, much more than GB memory is not really necessary, unless your OS can use it. XP can. XP can use it if you are running programs like Photo shop; It can use extra memory to store images during editing, etc. Most video programs can't make much use of it. As before, check your memory usage from the Task Manager. If you are using up all your memory and going to the hard drive for virtual memory, then add more.

The dual core processor will help, mainly with being able to run more applications at the same time. The applications would have to be dual core or dual processor aware to really take advantage of it. Again, X offers more options and X and dual processor aware programs are beginning to become more available.

[koinhelgo]

Get same writers.....
I use two at the same time burning (the same file) with NERO, but both are different makes and often my older burner will restrict burn speed with various media, hence restricts the overall burn speed of borth burners. If u have the same burners then they should give you the same allowed burn speed with the same media.
I think you can open several instances of NERO and perhaps burn different files to different drives, but I don't know how much of a problem it would be addressing files from the same HDD- I have never tried different files.
Also consider the output of your power supply- take an actual look at the thing to make sure it will cope, should be at least 400 W. My PC came fitted with a PSU that was supposed to be 350 W but when I opened the PC I found it to be only 300 W. Also note cheaper PSUs quote maximum power outage not the ACTUAL power they deliver, so best get a decent reliable one.

[Bodysurf]

I'm putting togethe a new computer, and want to get 3 writers. I'm hoping I wil be able to burn 3 cd's at once, and at the very least load up 3 DVDs/CDs on my computer, sit back on the couch with my laptop using PCAnywhere and start the burning on my desktop in the other room once the one disc get through. I know, but I burn a lot of music for friends (Grateful Dead, Phish, Panic) and each show is 3 discs, and to motivate myself this is what I want to do.

Can I get 3 identical drives or would it be better to get 3 different drives. I kind of wanted to get 3 plextor drives.

Get all the same model -- with the same firmware too.

Do you think I would be able to burn 3 CDs at once, or 2 DVDs at once on the following setup:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600 Dual Core
2 GB RAM
OS drives: 2 WD 10,000RPM Raptors on RAID 0
Storage drives: 2 WD 400GB Raid Edition on RAID 0

Unless you have some sort of funky hardware conflict, you should be able to do so easily. A few pointers though:

1. Put each drive on its own IDE cable if the drives are internal PATA -- don't use a "slave" drives. This means you are gonna need, at a minimum 7 IDE controllers if you are running PATA.
2. Use Firewire-800 or external SATA if the drive are external.

Obviously, use a modern OS such as XP or UNiX, not a Windows 9x variety. And buy high-quality media.

I've seen systems demo'ed by CalOptic that burn more than twice that amount of CDs/DVDs simultaneously. The drives were running off of FireWire 800.

[Jester700]

I have no problem with 4 different models at once using nero 6.6, on an Athlon XP 3000+. One on each PATA channel, 2 in external FW boxes. But I keep the burns to 16x, so there's no difference in speed change strategy. I've read that audio burns have generally fewer errors at that speed than higher ones, so that's another bennie.

Regardless of the make, the PATA drives take longer to write lead in. Not sure why, but it doesn't hurt the burn.

I DID test this once at 24x, and it hosed up. One PATA drive failed, and the others burned OK, but had to use their burnproof feature, and took longer than a 16x burn did.

[SaSi]

I agree with the point about RAID-0 on the boot drive. I also highy recommend an ultra high speed drive (10,000rpm) drive for boot. For some years, I have been mistaken in using an ageing drive of low capacity for the System disk. I never needed more than 20Gb for boot and recently, a 40Gb seemed more than enough.

However, I very recently replaced the 40Gb boot drive with a spare 160Gb drive. The system performs much much faster and I can now burn DVDs @ 16x without any problems even with other programs running with heavy CPU usage (e.g. VirtualDUB or CCE).

Burning to multiple burners with Nero is supported but reportedly there are problems with some drives. Burners have to be same model same f/w version. The NEC 3520 was reported to succesfully burn DVDs at 4 drives at once.

You need to connect IDE burners on the main m/b IDE channels. Most extra PCI2IDE controllers won't support CD-DVDRs. I would buy a motherboard with 2 IDE channels and an extra IDE/SATA controller in the Southbridge chipset. The Intel 875 support this so I guess most recent chipsets also provide for this. You can then use the 2 IDE channels for DVDRW and the other SATA channel(s) for Boot and Data disks.