Sony DRU500AX Installation Recommendation

[wwaag]

At long last, I am finally getting the new Sony drive.

Right now I have 2 HDD's on the primary IDE channel and a CDRW (master) and DVD reader (slave) on the secondary channel. I just installed a Promise Ultra133TX2 to provide 2 more IDE channels.

I am considering 2 options: (1) install the Sony as master on one of the new IDE channels on the Promise card; or (2) install the Sony as master on the secondary IDE channel and move the CD writer to an IDE channel on the new Promise card.

Any experience or recommendations would be appreciated. I tried Search, but it was down. Thanks in advance.

[housepig]

I would install the DVD-R as master on the IDE channel, move the cd-r to the slave on that channel, and move the DVD reader drive to the Promise card.

Reason being, of all 3 devices, the one I would prioritize least is the DVD reader, so I would not worry about the PCI bus creating a bottleneck.. it should still playback and rip fine (maybe a touch slower than when on the IDE from the motherboard) but I wouldn't want to hang a burner drive off a controller card on the PCI bus.

Have I ever done it? No (i've got enough IDE from the mobo to go around so far ) But a burner hanging off a PCI card is just one of those things that would make *me* paranoid about data throughput...

I'm sure someone will come along with a dissenting opinion, though... fire away!

good luck.

- housepig

[pb]

I have my DRU 500AX as a slave on the 2nd IDE channel on the M/B, with a DVD ROM as master, no problems so far. I use the DRU as a CD burner, so I ditched my CDRW burner.

[HyperYagami]

Do NOT put ATAPI devices (examples: CD/DVD drive, interal Zip drive) on Promise. It's not supported. You may not run into problems but you'll never know. (I know someone had a huge problem putting Sony on Promise).

Put the HDs on Promise, 500A on primary master and wherever you want for the rest.

[King Dick]

HyperYagami is absolutely correct - the Promise series of PCI controller cards do not support ATAPI devices.

In my system I have 4 hard drives on a Promise PCI controller with two DVD burners and a standard CDR connected to the onboard ATA controller which works fine. I have tried the DRU 500A connected to the Promise controller and outwardly it seems to work as normal UNTIL one has a look at the Event Viewer, where an information warning is posted every few seconds as the operating system strobes the drive which says "the drive 1 connected to PCI bus 0 has old or outdated firmware".

Regards, Dick.

[mrspangle]

HI,

I have been having burning issues with the Sony DW U10a heres my config

HDD on Primary Master
Nothing on Primary Slave
Sony DVD-R drive on Secondary Master
DVD-ROM on Secondary Slave


Should i changed these?

thanks

John

[GeordieBoy]

@ mrspangle
I cant see any problems with your setup unless you are copiing on the fly.

my setup is like this:
IDE 0 Master: 200Gb Maxtor Hard Drive with 8MB Buffer (7200rpm)
IDE 0 Slave: 200Gb Maxtor Hard Drive with 8MB Buffer (7200rpm)
IDE 1 Master: Sony Dru500a DVD Writer
IDE 1 Slave: Teac 48x CD-Writer

Maxtor PCI IDE controller card
IDE 0 Master: LG DVD-ROM Drive: 16x DVD
IDE 0 Slave: (none)
IDE 1 Master: 40gb Hard Drive
IDE 1 Slave: (none)