Ide

[music_lover]

Well hi there people thanks for the help you all have given me and do forgive for my mistakes
so lets get on with my prob
the thing is that i biught the cd writer and my comp guy has installed it on the primary IDE channel on which my HDD is working on i have my cd rom on the second ide channel so do i have to install my cd writer on the secondary ide channel or o keep it as it is
Thanks

[Raz0rX]

The change is not necessary if you are not experiencing any problems.

[BuddhaTB]

This is the correct way of hooking up your drives.
Primary Master: Hard Drive
Primary Slave: None
Secondary Master: CD-RW Drive
Secondary Slave: CD-ROM

The other alternative would be to switch the position of the CD-RW and CD-ROM on the secondary IDE chain.

[jase]

This is the correct way of hooking up your drives.
Primary Master: Hard Drive
Primary Slave: None
Secondary Master: CD-RW Drive
Secondary Slave: CD-ROM

The other alternative would be to switch the position of the CD-RW and CD-ROM on the secondary IDE chain.

Don't agree there BuddhaTB... I've always followed the mantra, keep sources separate from destinations. When writing a CD, the CDROM should be on a different IDE port to the CD writer. So, ideally

HDD : External UDMA card
CDROM : Primary Master
CDRW : Secondary Master.

If you cannot acquire a card (they are cheap things) then

HDD : Primary Master
CDROM : Primary Slave (try to use a UDMA-33-compatible drive if possible)
CDRW : Secondary Master.

[BuddhaTB]

You know what Jase, there are numerous set-ups. There is no correct one. Your set-up is good if you do a lot of on the fly copying. I would have used your set-up too, if my case wasn't so tall that the IDE cable doesn't reach from my hard drive to my DVD-ROM. So in my case, I just hook up the two optical drives on the same IDE cable and just use less copying on the fly.