Slave or master or none of these

[Tricia]

Hi I have a computer with windows xp pro on it and 2 DVD drives, one a DVD
writer. Would there be any advantage to making the DVD drive a slave on IDE
1 i.e. a slave on the hard drive cable and having the DVD writer as the
master on IDE 2 as against my present setup of both DVD drives on IDE 2?

As usual someone who claims to have more knowledge about computing than I
said it would be better to have the 2 DVD drives on separate cables. I said
he was blethering a load of rubbish.
Thanks Tricia

 

[Yves Leclerc]

It is never recommended to combine hard drives and DVD/CD drives on the same
IDE cable! The hard drive will be "slowed" down by the DVD drive. If you
want to separate the DVD drives, you can add a separate PCI IDE/ATA
controller.

 

[Anna]

It is never recommended to combine hard drives and DVD/CD drives on the
same IDE cable! The hard drive will be "slowed" down by the DVD drive.
If you want to separate the DVD drives, you can add a separate PCI IDE/ATA
controller.

Tricia (and Yves):
The performance of the two DVD drives will *not* be affected should they be
connected on the same IDE channel or if one is connected as Primary Slave
and the other as Secondary Master. And the hard drive will *not* be "slowed
down" because of the DVDs' IDE connections. Each device will perform at its
rated speed regardless of its IDE channel connection. At one time in the
now-distant past (computer-wise), there was some performance implications
involving IDE/ATAPI devices based on their connection/configuration. But
that hasn't been true for many years. So feel free to connect your devices
in any physically practical way.
Anna

 

[Ossama Elkadi]

Hello Tricia,

from my experience with my own PC, I can tell u that the best and error-free
performance is obtained if u connect the two DVD drives to the same
(secondary) cable, keeping the DVD writer as the master .
The hard disks should be connected together to the primary cable.

Otherwise, the PC will actually slow down, and may even lock up in some
cases while trying to read or write a DVD disk.

This is contrary to what your friend said, and even contradicts to what is
recommended in the manuals of most CD/DVD drives (to have each CD/DVD drive
on a separate cable). This is only useful if u copy from a CD/DVD to another
directly without copying to the hard disk first, and in most programs this
option is off by default.
If u recall that copying to the hard disk first is also the safer approach
against hardware or power failures, u have another reason to connect the two
CD/DVD drives to the same IDE cable.

Best regards,

Ossama Elkadi

 

[Guest]

If one regards this by way of operation rather than function, it makes not a
hoot of difference.

Let me explain it thus:-

In order to obtain the maximum 'write' speed to a DVD drive, then one would
write to a temp file on HDD first.

Thus if you read off a DVD ROM and then write to a DVD - Recorder slave or
master settings are irrelevant.

 

[Ossama Elkadi]

I see.

But why does the DVD/CD-RW manufacturer then recommend that the writer drive
be always the master?

 

[Kerry Brown]

Hi I have a computer with windows xp pro on it and 2 DVD drives, one a DVD
writer. Would there be any advantage to making the DVD drive a slave on
IDE 1 i.e. a slave on the hard drive cable and having the DVD writer as
the master on IDE 2 as against my present setup of both DVD drives on IDE
2?

As usual someone who claims to have more knowledge about computing than I
said it would be better to have the 2 DVD drives on separate cables. I
said he was blethering a load of rubbish.
Thanks Tricia

Tricia

You will probably receive many different opinions and they may all be right.
If you have fairly new equipment and all the drives conform to recent
standards then it doesn't matter where they are connected as long as the
right cables (80 pin) are used and the jumpers set accordingly. If any of
the drives are older or non-conforming then the DVD drives should be on a
different cable than the hard drives. I usually hook things up that way
"just in case".

Kerry

 

[Timothy Daniels]

But why does the DVD/CD-RW manufacturer then recommend
that the writer drive be always the master?

Ask their attorney.

*TimDaniels*