New DL burner in Dell XPS Gen 1?

BJB 2006-05-06 12:22:07 UTC #1

I have a Gen 1 Dell XPS and currently have the stock NEC 1100A DVD+RW single layer burner and a read-only DVD/CD drive as my optical drives. I am still running the Roxio software that came with it along with a variety of other audio and video software like Pinnacle Studio which work fine with the NEC.

I would like to upgrade one of those drives to a dual layer-dual format DVD burner and am considering the Sony. I am curious which drive most that have done this would recommend replacing. I recall that when I bought this, there was a big deal about it not supporting 2 burners at the same time probably because they put them on the same channel. If I had my preference, I guess I would want 2 burners in there, but I do not need a conflict. I know you cannot run both at the SAME TIME if they are on the same channel, but don't know enough about optical if they would co-exist on the channel if you used one to read and one to write. Don't see why not? If so, I could just replace my DVD-ROM and keep both burners in there?

I would prefer to put the new drive on the same optical channel currnetly in use as I want to save the other UDMA channel for another hard drive. Never have enough storage!

Anyway, I was wondering if my Roxio and other non-dual burner-aware software would continue to function with the new drive? Will it just see it as a single-layer burner and work? I know that older single-layer software will not dual-burn, but I really only need that capability for video editing and perhaps backup. So I understand I would have to load the Nero software that comes with the sony to get DL capabilities.

Any suggestions on the correct process? Delete old drive from control panel? Do I need to uninstall the Roxio stuff?

Thanks in advance. This is a great forum.
BJB

BJB 2006-05-28 19:25:20 UTC #2

The new Sony DL drive I am looking at comes with Nero....
Is the best approach to replace the old burner and install Nero or leave the old burner running with Roxio and replace the DVD/CD reader???

BJB

DaChew 2006-05-28 19:31:01 UTC #3

pull both old optical drives, save for reinstall after you upgrade to a better computer

bibloke73 2006-05-29 06:05:33 UTC #4

If i were you i'd just get a Promise Ultra100 TX2 IDE PCI Adapter Ultra 100 ATA or similar. this would provide you with 2 extra ide channels. if i remember rightly the motherboard in the pc you have will limit you to ultra dma 33 or 66, this will not be optimal for the newest writers.

if you get the add on pci card you should connect your fastest hard drive and the newest optical to it. you would still then be left with two spare ide channels on the board so nothing would have to share a channel.