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hey all, i figure i might as well ask. Clone cd gives me a warning saying that my 2 cd drives are on the same ide channel or whatever. I dont know a whole lot about IDE, but how can you have them on separate channels? Dont you only have 2 ide channels and isn't the other IDE cable being used by your hard drives?

BTW, i still use clonecd... just curious about the warning though. Thanks for any info.

If you're planning on doing on the fly copies from the DVD-ROM to the CD-RW, you will probably be better off putting them on separate IDE channels. If not, it should work fine.

I tend to work on the principle of one channel for reading, one for writing. So

IDE0/M = HDD
IDE0/S = DVDROM

IDE1/M = CDRW
IDE1/S = [N/A]

But realistically having a DVD and a CDRW on the same channel usually is no problem.

here's my setup, i have a onboard RAID controller, so i have 4 ide ports

Three 40GB's
Lite-On - LTR-48125W
Aopen 16x Slot DVD - DVD-1640 Pro-A

IDE0 Master = HDD
IDE0 Slave = Empty

IDE1 Master = HDD
IDE1 Slave = HDD

IDE2 Master = DVD
IDE2 Slave = Empty

IDE3 Master = CD-RW
IDE3 Slave = Empty

i can burn on the fly at 10x, but what do you think the max speed for burning on the fly is? (on the same ide chann)

I used to burn on-the-fly from my 16x/40x DVD-ROM (Toshiba SD-M1612) to a 32x (Liteon LTR-32123S) burner at 24x without the buffer underrun ever kicking in. But I suppose that it depends on your reader and your burning software more than anything. The software most times has a buffer that it fills before it ever lets the writer start burning, this can be a pre-set value or one that the user can define. I believe Nero has a 64 Mb buffer set as default, that coupled with a good reader can probably give you smoother, and faster burns (even when sharing the IDE channel). Check some of your softwares settings and see if you can find the buffer setting, you might want to fiddle with the values a bit to make your burning more efficient, just remember to write the original setting down in case it doesn't get more efficient .

i just got the buslink 48x, and in the manual it says that if you plug in the cd-rw into an ide cable that has an ata-66 or ata-100 hardrive on it, it will drop the speed of the harddrive to ata-33.. that true?

my current setup as follows (didn't install new burner yet)

primary/main (whatever its called) IDE: Hard drive (ata-66)
primary/main Ide slave: nothing

secondary ide master: dvd-rom
secondary ide slave: hp 10x burner

i wanted to put my new burner on the same ide chann as the hard drive so i could leave my old burner in, AND have a reader and a burner on separate channels... will i get the ata-33 problem?

If you do not do "copy on the fly", it shouldn't be a problem.

My mobo is a Gigabyte GA-8IEXP with RAID

My setup is:
IDE0 Master = Yamaha 24x10x40 CDRW (CRW3200EZ)
IDE0 Slave = Liteon 48x12x48 CDRW (LTR-48125W)

IDE1 Master = Liteon DVD-ROM (LTD163D)
IDE1 Slave = Empty

IDE2 Master = Seagate ST380021A Hard Drive
IDE2 Slave = Empty

IDE3 Master = Empty
IDE3 Slave = Empty

i DO want to copy on the fly... what will the prob be again?

i will either be using the dvd or old cd-rw as the reader
and the new burner as the burner

that's a reader on one ide and a burner on another ide.

btw, what about the ata-33 thingy?

as long as you use a newer 40/80 pin udma cable, it will auto use ata 33, or pio 4, whichever its capable of doing

i recommend splitting the drives apart, plus you can copy from both drives at the same time if there seperate

When they're both on the same IDE channel something has to wait for something because they're both trying to use the same pipe at the same time.
It might work fine but if you have enough IDE ports split them apart and it'll be a non issue.
Hope that helps explain it for ya
And yes I belive the IDE chain will only run as fast as the slowest device connected.

Dartman wrote:And yes I belive the IDE chain will only run as fast as the slowest device connected.

That used to be the case for older IDE controllers, but modern controllers typically support independent device timing, so it isn't true anymore. For example, you can mix a UDMA-5 master with a UDMA-3 slave, and each will run at its own rate. Of course, it still takes longer for the UDMA-3 device in this example to transfer data, so when both devices are transferring data at once (actually taking turns using the bus) the overall rate will be slower than if both used UDMA-5, but it will be faster than than if both used UDMA-3. The master transfers at UDMA-5 rates while the slave transfers at UDMA-3 rates, making for an overall average somewhere in between. And if the UDMA-3 device isn't actively transferring data, the UDMA-5 device will have the bus to itself and transfer at the full UDMA-5 rate.

Contrast this to to a hypothetical older controller that doesn't support independent device timing. It would force the UDMA-5 master down to UDMA-3 rates even when the slave wasn't transferring data - the situation to which Dartman referred. (Note - a real controller that supports UDMA is new enough that you can be assured it does support independent device timing, which is why I called this a "hypothetical controller".)

cfitz

If you look in to any major manufacturer of CD-RW detailled installation manual, they all suggest that if you do not have raid controller in your mother board, put the hard drive or drives in your primary controller with the booting hard drive to be in master and second non-booting in slave, then have your CD-ROM or DVD-Rom in secondary controller in master and your CD-RW as slave position in the same controller with CD-ROm.

rclayton17

With a modern IDE controller you can have both drives on the same channel and burn on the fly. Some hardware configurations may work better with variations, but I have seen a timed test report where on the fly 48x burning was faster when the drives were on the same channel than when they on separate channels. Go figure.

So, the bottom line is, if the two devices on one channel work OK for you, leave it alone and ignore the warning messages. Some of the software warning messages are years old and apply to obsolete configurations and concepts.

im sorry if i confused anyone, yes i do have my hd's on my RAID, i don't think the cd drives would work on them