IDE HD, CD-ROM, CDRW - Primary/Secondary, Master/Slave Setup?

CD, DVD and (Ultra HD) Blu-ray Writers LiteOn / PLDS / Sony Writer
#1

I bought a new CDRW & received it last night, Liteon 48x12x48 IDE & was wondering where would be the best place to put it?

Previously I had the HD as Master on the Primary IDE and the CD-ROM on the Secondary IDE as Master & and an old SCSI Yamaha 6x4x16 CDRW connection to a SCSI card in the PCI slot (Which I’ve now taken out), so I’m swaping a SCSI CDRW for a IDE one.

Whats the best configuration for these 3 IDE devices? HD has to be the Master on the Primary IDE, so whats the best to do with the CD-ROM & CDRW? Have them both on the secondary IDE cable Master/Slave? or one as the slave on the primary?

Which would be best for CD writing in terms on speed etc? & Does anyone know how long it should take to copy a whole CD @ 48x on the fly? (CD>CDR)

Hope thats not too many questions

Regards

Phil.

#2

Think this will be best:

Primary master: Harddrive
Primary slave: CD-ROM
Secondary Master: CD-RW
Secondary slave: None.

This way CD-ROM and CD-RW is not on the same cable (better for copying on the fly). And harddrive and CD-RW is not on the same cable(better for copying from harddrive to CD-RW).

For 48X copying on the fly your Reader have to be 52X/56X(48X may in some cases work) to deliver data fast enough without getting buffer underruns, which will make the burn process take more time because SMART-BURN have to kick in.

But if the reader is fast enoug(still remember that only data mode1 is normally read at full speed while music/VCD and such is read at slower speeds) it will take about 2 minutes and 50 seconds( ±10 seconds) to copy a full 80min CD.

#3

@ OC-Freak

Thanks M8, excellent thinking, I’ll give that setup a try tonight, was setting it up late last night & I think I ended up leaving it at

Primary Master: HD
Primary Slave: None
Secondary Master: CD-Rom
Secondary Slave: CDRW

Which took about 10-12 mins to do a full cd on the fly, havent had much time to play with it yet, but I’ll definately change it to the setup you posted tonight

Thanks alot

Cheerz

Phil.

#4

Thinking about it, I think thats what I had to start with, Had the HD & and CD-ROM on the same cable, with HD jumper set to Master and CD-ROM jumper set to slave, but when booting up it didnt find the HD! Does it matter what connectors on the IDE cable they connect to? Coz I think I had the HD on the middle conector as its a tower case and the HD is close to the IDE connector on the motherboard and the CD-ROM drive in higher up, so I had the long end of the cable connected to the CD-ROM & because the other end has the connectors closer together the HD was on the middle connector and the other end to the motherboard. Does it matter which way the IDE cable goes? or was I not thinking and was just something stupid like trying to get it to autodetect in the BIOS?

Anyway thanks for your help, I should have fun playing about with it tonight :slight_smile:

#5

should work.

Some recommends having the master device at the end of the cable, some do the opposite…

Presonally both ways have worked ok (just make sure that it’s not set to cable select)

#6

On my box, I have the CDRW set up as secondary IDE master, and the DVD drive as secondary IDE slave. Jumpered as such, with the CDRW master on the end of the 80 conductor UDMA cable.

With both the reader and writer drives on the same IDE channel, copying on the fly is NOT recommended, but it does work, I just (accidently) did it last night, with an audio CD no less. I though I was going to get a coaster for sure, but the LTD163 rips fast enough, and Smart Burn on the LTR32123S works well enough that I never under-ran the CDRW buffer. This was using Nero to make a quick copy for a band mate.

Anyway, I don’t put CDs on the primary IDE because once I was trying to install Windoze on a machine with the CD on IDE primary (SCSI HD), and half way through the installation, it couldn’t find the CD drive any longer, seems like the installer insisted the CD be on the secondary IDE. Go figure.

If you specifically want to be able to copy on the fly, I would put the drives on separate IDE channels. The problem with that, in your case, is the CD drives are probably UDMA33 devices, so it will slow down everything on that channel to UDMA33 speed. If you have a UDMA100 HD, you just put the brakes on. The work around is to get a RAID mobo with the extra IDE channels, put your HD on the RAID (you can set up the RAID controller to just be a JBOD controller, and then it’s just additional IDE channels and not RAID). IMO, mobos should have 3 IDE channels, not 2.

Best luck!

#7

I don’t put CDs on the primary IDE because once I was trying to install Windoze on a machine with the CD on IDE primary (SCSI HD), and half way through the installation, it couldn’t find the CD drive any longer, seems like the installer insisted the CD be on the secondary IDE. Go figure

I install from the CD or DVD drive configured as slave on the Primary IDE. Never faced any problem with Win 9x thru XP.

#8

Personally speaking I have a pair of hard disks on the 1st IDE cable and a DVD and CD-RW on the 2nd. This means that on the fly copying is not recommended but gives better performance copying from CD/DVD to HDD.

#9

i think you should buy an other IDE controller.i konow that this is not the cheapest way, but when you plug your CDROM as Primary Master, your hard disk will run in Ultra DMA 33 as your CD.
This will bring a dramatic decrease in overall system preformance.
However, if You don’t what to buy this controller plug your CD as Secondary Master and LiteOn as Secondary Slave.
i’m working on this configuration for 3 yerars with diffrent CDRW’s
and it did not cause any problems.