Hello
My motherboard is based on nForce2 chipset and there are 2 IDE channels, so I can use up to 4 devices (without buying an additional PCI card).
What is the best setup (channel-wise and Master/Slave) for the following devices:
2 HDDs (80 GB each, with one of the HDDs being the system/applications drive);
1 Asus DVD-ROM and
1 NEC ND-3520A burner.
Some time ago I tried hooking up the optical drives to a PCI-IDE card (as masters, each on its own channel) but that resulted in terrible writing speeds and buffer level jumping up and down like crazy (that was a Promise-based card and I saw post saying here that these are not optical-drive friendly).
Would it make sense to connect the HDDs to the PCI controller (that Promise card is laying around somewhere) and use the mobo IDE for optical drives?
Thanks a lot for any advice.