dual CD-Rom, Same IDE. Good, Bad, Ugly?

[squash]

hopefully a simple question.
I have two CD-ROM drives, one is DVD/CD the other is CDRW.
I have them both on the same IDE cable, one slave one master.
On one IDE is the hardrive, primary.
On the other IDE is both CD's, secondary.

Someone mentioned this may not be the best bet for when i copy cd's. They should be on different IDE's.
I do get failures when i copy sometimes, about 1 in 4 fail.


Any thoughts would be useful.

As alway we thank you for your support

 

[wolluf]

If you put either CD device on same controller as hard drive, unless CD is ATA33 or better (I'm assuming the HD is ATA33 or better), it will slow hard drive down (and in fact it probably will anyway - because Cds are different to HDs, there's always the lag while CD spins up and down.

Have you considered not doing 'on the fly' disk to disk copies? (ie, let burning software copy to disk first). Its a bit slowere, but much safer (I'm presuming not a burn-proof CD writer).

 

[cdogg]

Also, you could invest $20-30 in a PCI IDE controller which will give you a total of 4 IDE channels instead of just 2 - one for each device! That would be the ultimate solution.

However, there is a technology called IDT (Independent Drive Timing) on newer motherboards (3 years old or newer). IDT lets you put an two devices on the same channel that have different ATA interfaces. For example, most CDROMs are ATA/33, while newer hard drives are ATA/100. With IDT, both would run on their own interface without interfering with or slowing down the other.

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/confTiming-c.html

So, if you have a newer motherboard, you should be OK with putting the DVD/CD drive on the same channel as the hard drive, and leave the burner on its own IDE channel. Only do this if you don't plan on buying a PCI IDE controller card which is the best option.


~cdogg

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
- A. Einstein

 

[WheeDoggy]

CDRW's are pretty cheap nowadays and have buffer underrun protection which will enable you to burn on the fly with both cdrom and cdrw on the same ide cable without the buffer underrun errors.

As wolluf said, putting the cd on the same cable as the HDD would slow the HDD down.

Again, if you go for a new cdr/w in order to do on the fly copying, make sure that it features "buffer underrun protection.

Regards

 

[dakota81]

There's other factors too why cd copies can fail. One reason is you should burn no faster than half the read speed of the cdrom. So say if you've got a 40x cdrom, burn no faster than 20x under any circumstances.

I'm not sure why dvd drives don't go to the ata/66 interface. Pioneer drives do (depending on which model, of course), and it's really nice not having to worry about matching drives on the ports.

 

[squash]

I like this idea of the PCI IDE card. I will most likely look into that.

My motherboard is Asus P4 about 2 years old, with P4 1.6Ghz processor.

I dont know for sure but i bet the CD/DVD is only ATA/33 while I know my HD is ATA/100.

Great info thx

 

[cdogg]

It appears that everyone is under the impression that if you place an ATA/33 device on the same channel as an ATA/100 device, then both will use ATA/33.

THIS IS SIMPLY NOT TRUE

IDT allows 2 devices to use 2 different interfaces on the same IDE channel. For example, I've got an Intel 815EEB motherboard with a PIII in one of my systems. The secondary channel has an ATA/33 CDROM and an ATA/66 burner. Using the Intel ATA Storage Driver, the utility shows me that each device is running at its own UDMA mode.

For those with non-intel motherboards, Windows 2000/XP do a good job of showing you the same information in Device Manager.

If you re-read my last post, there's a link that will help explain it. As long as your system doesn't date back further than the Athlon or PIII days, then you should be OK. ~cdogg

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
- A. Einstein

 

[WheeDoggy]

CDOGG

You are correct on the ATA point but the point I was trying to make was that if the CDROM was being used wouldn't it be cutting into the HDD's spin time? (ie: both cannot run at the same time)??

Rgds

 

[WheeDoggy]

Meant to say "CDROM being used on same cable as HDD"

 

[cdogg]

Yes, they must share the IDE bus and may slow down when both are being accessed at the same time. No doubt about that.

It all boils down to going with the lesser of the 2 evils. If you do a lot of CD-to-CD burning and don't want to fuss with an add-in PCI card, you might be better off one way or the other.

Just depends on the 'type' of performance you plan on getting out of your PC...


~cdogg

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
- A. Einstein

 

[dakota81]

If ATA/100 & ATA/33 devices are on the same channel they can run at their full potential, but you can still run into some motherboards with stability issues when using that combination. Just two months ago I was setting up a machine with a KT133 chipset and after installing the OS, and once through bootup, the motherboard failed to recognize the harddrive or cdrom as valid boot devices anymore. I put them on separate channels and everything worked again.

 

[cdogg]

dakota,
While instabilities are definitely a possibility, the current IDE spec states that it should work. I was merely pointing that out. I would never recommend mixing your primary hard drive with any other device on the same IDE channel if you can avoid it. Getting the most out of your system with more than 2 IDE devices translates to using a PCI IDE controller or going SCSI.


~cdogg

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
- A. Einstein