Pilgrim wrote:The original configuration was HDD PM and Zip drive PS..... CD-RW SM and CD ROM SS. However, I was told by many that this is not the ideal setup and thus when I installed the new burner, I changed the configuration to what it is now.
Ignoring the Zip drive, that is actually a perfectly acceptable configuration. With one hard drive and two optical drives, there are two general configurations to choose from, depending on how you intend to use the drives the most:
http://www.cdrlabs.com/phpBB/viewtopic. ... 5144#55144
(Ignore the bits about buying IDE cables - they were specific to the other person's questions)
However, tossing the Zip in the mix does change things a bit. I would agree that it is preferable to keep the Zip off the IDE channel that has the hard drive. And in general it is better to also have the CD-RW on a separate channel than the hard drive so that, while burning, reads from the hard disc don't interfere with writes to the CD-RW. But given the difficulties in mixing UDMA and Multi-word DMA/PIO on VIA chipsets that Jase mentioned, and the potential InCD-Zip problems KCK mentioned, the best compromise between speed and stability for your system might end up being:
PM = WD hard disc @ UDMA 4 or 5, whichever it supports
PS = LiteOn CD-RW @ UDMA 2
SM = LG CD-ROM @ Multiword DMA 2
SS = Zip 250 @ Multiword DMA 1
In this case we are violating the rule-of-thumb that advises separating the hard drive and the CD-RW drive in favor of the separating the Zip from the UDMA drives. This assumes that you rule out the LiteOn as the source of the instability with the Zip-less tests you are running right now, and also assumes that you want to keep the Zip drive. But, I'm getting ahead of things here. Let's hear how your stability tests worked out with the Zip removed from the system.
cfitz