Best configuration for IDE devices

[IndianCreek]

I am looking for suggestions on configurations for IDE devices on a system that has 1 dvd-/+rw (tdk 840G), 1 dvd-rom (sony 16x), an OS hard drive, and 2 other hard drives used for data storage of movies (80GB & 200GB), used in a removable hard drive rack mounted into a 5.25" drive bay.
I'm asking this because I sometimes have trouble when burning a movie with the TDK and ripping a movie with the Sony 16x. The comp freezes forcing me to restart, wasting a dvd+r, wasting time, and having to restart the rip again. I also want to remedy this problem because I plan to buy another dvd -/+rw and I want to be able to burn with both drives simultaneously to save time.
As of now I have the OS hard drive (master) and the TDK 840G (slave)on the same IDE cable, and the removable internal hard drive rack (master) & the Sony 16x (slave) on the same IDE cable... I'm open to suggestions on a better way to connect these devices. Should I look into buying new IDE Cables ?

Thanks in advance, any insight is greatly appreciated, and if I'm any newbie info please let me know.

[iooi]

I'm assuming you have a ide card installed as you have 3 hard drives, unless you have a m/b that has 4 channels.
You could try the dvd and writer on the same channel to see if thats any better, I tend to find ripping and burning on the fly to be a pain in the butt and always rip to h/d and burn from there..Yes it takes longer but you have less problems.
Also it sounds like you could be a power issue what size is your power pack ?

[JEEPn]

I first would increase your ram to at least 512 or higher. make sure that your primary and secondary IDE channels tranfer mode are set to 'DMA if available' Your drives should be 7200 RPMs and if you are using the HD that is on the removable 5.25 rack as the storage for the files that you are burning I would connect it directly to the IDE cable and have the burner on that same cable.

to set DMA, right click on my computer...click Manage..click Device Manager....expand by clicking the + on IDE ATA/ATAPI controller..right click primary IDE channel...click properties..click the Advance Settings tab and change the transfer mode on both device 0 and 1 to 'DMA id available'
do the same thing for the secondary channel.

hope this is helpful.

[proxyx99]

Obviously OS has to be a pimary master. Put a DVD 16x as a slave, TDK as a sec. master and the rest as you please. To see if the bus affects your burning leave TDK as the only one on a sec. channel and burn a DVD. If no success look for other config issues. As indicated above make sure DMA is set. Try to avoid "cable select" setting on a TDK and set it to master on the back (jumpers). Check your burning software and use ASPICHK to verify ASPI status (you may need to reinstall ASPI, if this is the case use ver. 4.61 - standard).

[lchiu7]

I have two DVD drives, one a burner and the other a DVD ROM. OS is on a 60G drive on the same IDE channel as the burner. 250G drive used for storing video is on the same IDE channel as the DVDROM. Also I have a 160G drive running off USB 2.0

This ensures that whenever I capture to either the 250G or the 160G drives
1. I can still do stuff on the OS drive where all the apps are since the capture is not coflicting with access to the same drive as the apps

2. When burning I am burning to a different IDE channel from the source drive (whether it's on an IDE channel or USB 2.0)

I always do disk copies to the HD first - as somebody says it takes longer but it's far more reliable

[MysticE]

It will take some trial and error to determine what works for you. As was mentioned a Raid MOBO that will allow the use of 4 separate IDE channels would be nice or an IDE PCI card (for the HD's not the opticals) might also work. As far as direct/on the fly burning, it can work, as that's always the way I do it (no problems) and I've got both opticals on IDE2 (burner MASTER, reader SLAVE). And although I've no real evidence that it makes a difference I do like to use matched hardware, I've got 2 identical Samsung 160g HD's (very impressed with their speed and quietness) and 2 LG Opticals. And when it come to media I only use RitekG04's and only the ones that come in the red Ridata shrink that say RIDATA on the hub.

[Jayhawk]

All good suggestions so I'll offer one more. Buy a Promise IDE Controller card which will give you 2 more channels (4 devices) for about $30. That will allow your OS hard drive, burner, storage hard drive, and dvd-rom to all be masters.

[IndianCreek]

First of all, I REALLY appreciate all the replies and suggestions.
I don't do on-the-fly burning, I have always ripped to HD then burned from there, the part I think you guys got confused about was the fact that I have 3 hard drives. The removable IDE HD rack that I mentioned allows me to power down and remove a tray containing one of my IDE storage HD's that I use for video and swap for the other, then I power up again. That way I don't have to open the box everytime I need to burn something from that I ripped to another hard, quite convenient.
Another specific that I may have left out is that I use both opticals (TDK burner & dvd-rom) to rip to the hard drives.
What I think may be a problem if the two opticals are on the same IDE channel is that if I'm ripping with the dvd-rom and burning with the TDK, the data going to and from the DVD-rom may interfere with data going to and from the TDK burner, thus causing conflicts and the system to freeze.

JEEPn Posted: May 04, 2004 01:43
I first would increase your ram to at least 512 or higher. make sure that your primary and secondary IDE channels tranfer mode are set to 'DMA if available' Your drives should be 7200 RPMs and if you are using the HD that is on the removable 5.25 rack as the storage for the files that you are burning I would connect it directly to the IDE cable and have the burner on that same cable.

Good idea, can't afford to buy more RAM right now, drives are indeed 7200RPM, and are already set to "DMA if available", will try the ide connection suggested next

proxyx99 Posted: May 04, 2004 02:05
Obviously OS has to be a pimary master. Put a DVD 16x as a slave, TDK as a sec. master and the rest as you please. To see if the bus affects your burning leave TDK as the only one on a sec. channel and burn a DVD. Check your burning software and use ASPICHK to verify ASPI status.

The same idea as JEEPn, thanks, but if the TDK is the only device on the secondary IDE channel then I would have no source to burn from, whereas I burn from the 2 HD's that I use in my removable Internal HD rack. Where can I get ASPICHK ??

lchiu7 Posted: May 04, 2004 03:30
OS is on a 60G drive on the same IDE channel as the burner. 250G drive used for storing video is on the same IDE channel as the DVDROM. Also I have a 160G drive running off USB 2.0

A few questions:
you ever experience lag while burning with the burner attached to the same IDE channel as the OS HD? I know with my other computer I had that problem a while ago with the cd-rw's I/O slowing down the I/O of the OS HD. I was also wondering about the 'capture' you mentioned. I don't do any video capturing, only ripping from other dvds. Do you do any ripping with both dvd drives? I use both for ripping and many times its simultaneous, I would think that in that scenario, with TDK on Primary slave and DVD-rom on Secondary IDE Channel with storage HD, that ripping from 2 different sources to the same HD would cause lag and/or I/O conflicts. Or a more simpler example would be if I wanted to burn from the storage drive that was on the same IDE channel as the DVD-rom and at the same time rip from the DVD-rom to that same storage HD.

Jayhawk Posted: May 04, 2004 09:36
Buy a Promise IDE Controller card which will give you 2 more channels (4 devices) for about $30. That will allow your OS hard drive, burner, storage hard drive, and dvd-rom to all be masters.

Having all my devices as masters would make them all faster? Wouldn't there have to be a bottle-neck effect somewhere with the 4 separate IDE channels?

Awaiting reply posts from all, Thanks and I apologize for the time it took for me to repost (end of semester, tryna finish stuff up AND study)

[Jayhawk]

Having all my devices as masters would make them all faster? Wouldn't there have to be a bottle-neck effect somewhere with the 4 separate IDE channels?

Well, they wouldn't exactly run faster because they are masters, but rather because they would all be on non-conflicting channels so they would not have to share bandwidth (cable or bus) nor would they suffer any rotational delay, head repositioning etc. That may not be happening in all cases now because you do have at least two masters now, plus a rip from a secondary on one channel to a secondary or master on the other maybe isn't a conflict now (so it would not be faster). What I'm trying to say is it depends on what you are doing. Ripping on the same channel you're burning on is definitely a major conflict. What the four channel setup does is avoid those "potential" conflicts and slowdowns IF they occur in a given situation.

The controller card uses the PCI bus and the onboard IDE channels use the Chipset bus so there could not be a bottleneck between them. There may be a bottleneck on the PCI bus depending upon what other cards you have, and what they might be doing while you're ripping/burning. Let's say you had a PCI capture card and wanted to capture mpg2 while you were ripping a DVD and burning another one. Might be a bottleneck. A very unlikely scenario though. Put one hard drive and one optical on the onboard IDE channels, and one hard drive and the other optical on the PCI controller card. All masters. Should work great.

[bottle-necked]

someone call my name?

[proxyx99]

All the ASPI stuff is avail. from Adaptec website.
2 optical drives on 1 bus is not a good solution, what about CD/DVD straight copy. Same IDE bus at speeds over 40x and there is a high probability you have a coaster (much diminished with BurnProof but still not a good config). HD has higher transfer capacity and won't suffer from this issue.
As to how to check with a single master? simple, put all disc content in a Temp dir on the OS drive, remove sec. slave and burn the disc. Best transfer (fastest) is from 1st to 2nd IDE bus, not on the same bus. The config I gave you is most versatile and efficient. Choice is yours.

[lchiu7]

A few questions:
you ever experience lag while burning with the burner attached to the same IDE channel as the OS HD? I know with my other computer I had that problem a while ago with the cd-rw's I/O slowing down the I/O of the OS HD. I was also wondering about the 'capture' you mentioned. I don't do any video capturing, only ripping from other dvds. Do you do any ripping with both dvd drives? I use both for ripping and many times its simultaneous, I would think that in that scenario, with TDK on Primary slave and DVD-rom on Secondary IDE Channel with storage HD, that ripping from 2 different sources to the same HD would cause lag and/or I/O conflicts. Or a more simpler example would be if I wanted to burn from the storage drive that was on the same IDE channel as the DVD-rom and at the same time rip from the DVD-rom to that same storage HD.

No problems burning with the burner on the same IDE channel as the OS since most of the data transfer is coming from the HD on the other IDE channel. And what I am usually doing on the OS is just browsing the Internet (reading this forum!) so the browser is loaded into memory (1G)

I usually rip from the DVDROM which is on the same channel as the target 250G drive. Haven't experienced any problems and I do that since I would prefer to burn out or overuse a DVDROM than a burner.

I wouldn't try to be too ambitious with doing things at the same time. But what I have managed to do is burn from the 250G drive while at the same time recording a TV show onto an external USB2.0 drive (720x576 MJPEG compression) without dropping any frames (Athlon 2400 XP+)

[lchiu7]

First of all, I REALLY appreciate all the replies and suggestions.
I don't do on-the-fly burning, I have always ripped to HD then burned from there, the part I think you guys got confused about was the fact that I have 3 hard drives. The removable IDE HD rack that I mentioned allows me to power down and remove a tray containing one of my IDE storage HD's that I use for video and swap for the other, then I power up again. That way I don't have to open the box everytime I need to burn something from that I ripped to another hard, quite convenient.

I achieve the same with USB 2.0. I often capture a TV show to the USB 2.0 drive (160G 7200 WD) and when it's finished, move the drive to another machine to edit and convert to MPEG2 so I can still do other work on the main machine (or capture another show). I find USB 2.0 fast enough not to have to worry about using the faster IDE channel

[disturbed1]

Primary Master - OS Drive
Primary Slave - DVD Rom

Secondary Master - DVD-RW
Secondary Slave - EMPTY

2 Channel Promise IDE Card (~$30)

Channel 1 Master - HD
Channel 1 Slave - EMPTY

Channel 2 Master - HD
Channel 2 Slave - EMPTY

This way you won't overload one IDE channel or another. Since each HD is on an idependant bus, DVD compile times will be faster, no conflicts burning from any HD to your writer, and DVD copy on the fly will still be possible. The only snag, is a slower ripping time if you rip to your OS drive.

I have 4 systems set up this way, and has proven to be flawless for me.

[proxyx99]

This is a no-brainer. With additional card you can manouver any way you want. The config above is what I use and recommend. Fastest retrieval time as no device has to wait for a data chunk to be uploaded to be able to download (within the IDE bus). No wonder that it works for you... 8)