DVD-R master/slave installation question...

[StrikeFire83]

Hello.

This may sound like a stupid question, but I'm going to go ahead and ask it anyway.

I just bought the new TDK 8x/8x burner and am preparing to install it into my Dell P4 2.2 Ghz.

I've been reading on this forum that if I install the drive as a slave that I won't be able to record at the full 8x speeds, which would suck.

Finally, my question: If I set the jumper on the TDK drive to MASTER and the jumper on my old DVD-Rom drive to SLAVE, does it matter which IDE port I plug into which drive?

The sales guy at CompUSA said that I have to plug the "one on the end" into the MASTER drive and the "one in the middle" to the slave. The guy sounded like he didn't really know what the hell he was talking about. Does this really matter, or is setting the jumpers correctly all i have to do?

Thanks in advance for any help.

[ViRaL1]

My reccomendation is setting it to Master and putting it on your secondary IDE channel. You can only have 1 master and one slave on each channel, and chances are your hard drive is your primary master. If you have another drive on your secondary channel, you should set it to slave in order to ensure there are no hardware conflicts. It doesn't matter which connector on the cable is connected to the master or slave as long as one end (usually the BLUE connector) is plugged into the IDE controller (that is, unless your drives are setup for Cable Select and you have the proper cable, but this isn't all that common anymore).

[StrikeFire83]

Thanks for the quick reply.

I don't think my system is on cable select, I'll check the drives when I crack open the case tomorrow. If not, I'll just change the jumpers accordingly.

Thanks for the info.

One more question, is the jumper configuration the same fo all drives, like is far left always cable select, middle always slave, and far right always master?

Thanks again.

[ViRaL1]

There's usually some kind of marking on the drives themselves as far as jumper settings are concerned, if all else fails, check the manufacturer's web site.

[DTSL06]

It didnt matter on my system. I have a Plex 708a and I have it set as slave on my secondary IDE. It burns Memorex 4x discs at 8x (8 min for full burn).

[odd1out]

Yeah, pretty sure my DVR-105 is slaved off the LITE-ON DVD-ROM. No issue burning 4x inside 15 minutes. Ever. "Doing the math" that's about 5MB/sec, UDMA/33 theoretically handles 33MB/sec, of course that's not sustainable, but even so 5MB/sec should be within tolerance. Just make sure you observe the usual precautions:
1. Disable all TSRs, screen savers, background processes (to the extent possible under XP in any case)
2. Do not attempt to multi-task while burning
3. Match media to your drive
4. Maintain adequate system resources, e.g. at least 10GB free, defrag as needed, enough RAM, etc.

[StrikeFire83]

Yeah, pretty sure my DVR-105 is slaved off the LITE-ON DVD-ROM. No issue burning 4x inside 15 minutes. Ever. "Doing the math" that's about 5MB/sec, UDMA/33 theoretically handles 33MB/sec, of course that's not sustainable, but even so 5MB/sec should be within tolerance. Just make sure you observe the usual precautions:
1. Disable all TSRs, screen savers, background processes (to the extent possible under XP in any case)
2. Do not attempt to multi-task while burning
3. Match media to your drive
4. Maintain adequate system resources, e.g. at least 10GB free, defrag as needed, enough RAM, etc.

Hello.

This raises another question, I've got an 80 Gig HDD, but its partitioned 60 and 20, with the XP Home Edition on the 20 Gig partition. Will it f**k things up if I burn to and from my 60 gig partition? I want a larger HDD, but with this DVD Writer purchase that's not happening any time soon. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks.

[budz]

Strikefire83 wrote:

This raises another question, I've got an 80 Gig HDD, but its partitioned 60 and 20, with the XP Home Edition on the 20 Gig partition. Will it f**k things up if I burn to and from my 60 gig partition?

I have a 60 gb and a 120 gb hard drive. I have my 60 gb partitioned in 13.9 gb, 13,9 gb & 29.3. And the 120 gb is used as a secondary hard drive. I burn within the 120 gb hard drive and have no problems.

[StrikeFire83]

That's ultimately what I'd like to do too, have two physical Hard Discs, but I only have the $$ for one HDD right now.

Have you ever burned from partitions within a single HDD? Because that's what I am planning to do and I just want to know if it's going to screw things up.

Thanks.

[manyk]

You shouldn't have ANY problems burning from within partitions. I do it all the time without a hitch.

[budz]

Strikefire83 wrote:

Have you ever burned from partitions within a single HDD? Because that's what I am planning to do and I just want to know if it's going to screw things up.

It won't screw things up. I should have said in my earlier post that I also burn within my main 60 gb hard drive that has 3 partitions. You won't screw things up.

[ccbadd]

The sales guy at CompUSA said that I have to plug the "one on the end" into the MASTER drive and the "one in the middle" to the slave.

Actually, when using UDMA, it is recommended to always place the Master the farthest away from the motherdoard connecter. If there is only one drive on the IDE channel or you are not in UDMA mode, it doesn't matter and it will work either way, but the sales person was correct in making that recommendation.

I have a Dell 4600 witha single 160GB SATA drive partitioned with a 40GB OS partition and a 120GB utility partition. I keep all my data on the utility partition for easy backup purposed and also use it for DVD creation with no prblems. I have a DVD-Rom as primary master and my writer as the secondary master. With only have one drive per channel, I can write DVD's with surfing the net or doing anything that is not disk intensive with no problems. One thing I can't do is copy a dvd on the fly at 8X, but that is do to the reader just not being able to feed the burner fast enough to keep up.