What's wrong with putting your CD and burner on same channel

[jeffbourner]

I've been burning CDs for ages now with both my drives on the same channel without any problem ever!

Copying CD's is no problem either, so what's all the fuss about?

[burninfool]

No fuss here,if it works for you then keep doin' it.On my system I have to put DVD-ROM on one channel(slave to HDD) and writer on another.

[cfitz]

In general it is best to keep the source and destination for IDE device transfers on separate channels to avoid contention on the IDE bus. Of course, with multiple drives installed in a system some drives will have to share a channel unless you want to buy separate IDE controllers for each couple devices.

The advice to put the CD-ROM/DVD-ROM on a separate channel from the CD-RW is targeted towards those who want to do on-the-fly copying (that is, copying directly from one optical drive to the other without making an intermediate image on hard disc). With some setups, depending on transfer modes and/or buffer underrun protection capabilities, the competition of both the reader and writer for the same IDE channel can limit burning speed or cause buffer underruns.

On the other hand, putting both optical drives on the secondary channel and leaving the hard drive by itself on the primary is not only acceptable but preferred if one has no interest in on-the-fly copying. That's how I have my system set up.

Do you perform true on-the-fly copying? If so, what burning speeds do you achieve, and does your buffer underrun protection kick in?

And, like burninfool says, the most important thing is that what you have works for you. If you aren't having any problems, then don't worry about it.

cfitz

[Burn2death]

burninfool wrote

No fuss here,if it works for you then keep doin' it.On my system I have to put DVD-ROM on one channel(slave to HDD) and writer on another.

Unless system speed it not important to you, why would you want to put your CD burner on the some IDE as you HDD, by doing this your HDD is only able to run at the speed of the DVD-Rom which is probably UDMA 33, while your HDD is probably able to run at higher speed (UMDA 33/66/100), it seems that you think you are doing this to make your burner more reliable but the result is opposite because your whole system has slow down so there for you burning is less reliable.

[cfitz]

Unless system speed it not important to you, why would you want to put your CD burner on the some IDE as you HDD, by doing this your HDD is only able to run at the speed of the DVD-Rom which is probably UDMA 33, while your HDD is probably able to run at higher speed (UMDA 33/66/100).

While it used to be true that putting a slow device on the same IDE channel with a fast device would force both devices to operate using the slower device's transfer mode, that is not the case any longer. Modern IDE controllers and devices support independent device timing that allows each device to operate at its own speed using its own transfer mode, independently of the other device on the channel. Thus, if the DVD-ROM drive isn't being actively used, the hard drive can operate at full speed without impediment.

Of course, if both drives are being used at the same time then they have to share the bus, and the hard drive will have to wait longer for the DVD-ROM to complete its transfers before the hard drive can take control of the bus and take its turn. But even this is often not too significant if you have a newer optical drive that supports UDMA 33. And remember that the UDMA transfer rates are maximum interface rates, not sustained device transfer rates. An IDE drive can't sustain transfer rates anywhere near 100 MB/s.

Even so, I still prefer to have my hard drive alone on primary, and the two optical drives on secondary. That eliminates any worry about degrading hard drive performance (for an older system that might not support independent device timing) and optimizes for transfer from either optical drive to hard disc. But then again, I don't burn on-the-fly.

cfitz

[ryus]

I am using an IDE controller card, the Promise ATA133 card. At first, I tried putting my burner on the IDE card, but it wouldnt burn at full speed properly. So instead I put my 52X cdrom on the IDE card. My setup is:

Primary Master: C:\ Harddisk
Slave: nothing

Secondary Master: Burner
Secondary Slave: nothing


IDE Controller Card: Primary Master: 52X Cdrom
Secondary Master: D:\ harddisk


Do you think that a cdrom on the IDE Card is reliable?? In terms of data transfer, since a burner wouldnt perform properly?

And what if I were to put a DVD rom on the IDE card? Would that perform properly??

PS. I burn on the Fly Alot!

[Spazmogen]

It's a "what ever works for you" scenario. If it works: don't change anything.

I had a 16x writer and my DVD Rom on the same cable for years without any problems.

[cfitz]

Some people have had trouble trying to run optical drives on high-speed add-in PCI IDE cards. Based on that, the general recommendation is to put your hard drive (which can better make use of the higher transfer speeds anway) on the add-in PCI contoller card and put your optical drives on the motherboard's controller. But, as Spazmogen said, if you aren't having any problems, leave it like it is and don't worry about it.

cfitz

[Dartman]

I have my main burners as masters on the on board IDE. I have 2 LiteOn
burners a Lite On 166 DVD and the Sony 500a
the Sony and the 52x are master and the older 48x and the DVD reader are slaves. I can burn on the fly from any of the burners from the DVD drive, at least the 2 masters anyways, That's why I set them up that way, hate to waste time with a extra step. I haven't really tried burning any DVD's on the fly, the way most have to be done you can't anyways but cdr's work fine.
Some folks will get away with setting everything on the same IDE bus, some wont, like they say if it works OK for you use it, if not rearrange things till it's happy.
I used to run SCSI devices becuase older burners were non bufferprotected and that was a better way to avoid problems and hook up more stuff safely. Plus older stuff was almost always SCSI anyways.
Now with the much improved IDE buses these days it's not a big factor anymore and most good boards have scads of IDE port now.
My HD's are all on the RAID ports and they also work fine even though none are a raid array and I have 4 of them also

[dodecahedron]

stuff was almost always SCSI anyways.
Now with the much improved IDE buses these days it's not a big factor anymore and most good boards have scads of IDE port now.

is it really true that there's no big performance difference between IDE and SCSI anymore? i thought SCSI was still much better than IDE.
i was wondering about that.
besides it's getting hard to find SCSI hardware (except for hard drives)

[cfitz]

SCSI is still a lot better than IDE, both because of its ability to release the bus and allow multiple transfers to be outstanding at once and because SCSI, with its added expense, is usually only included with higher-end drives sporting faster mechanisms (I'm thinking primarily of hard drives here). Of course, this last point doesn't have anything to do with SCSI itself as a technology. It is just that there isn't much point in attaching expensive, high-performance SCSI interfaces to slower, cheaper drives.

Having said that, things are beginning to change with the introduction of SATA. And existing ATA drives and controllers are generally sufficient for today's CD burning needs.

cfitz

[Dartman]

If I could still get burners that are this fast and cheap in SCSI I would. But IDE is cheaper and more people have it becuase every board includes it so that's what they make now.
The SCSI HD that are real fast are usualy 3 times more spendy the IDE and they are smaller most of the time. That also limits their use to high end servers and like that. Also the real fast ones take special cards and cables so that adds even more expense then most normal type SCSI burners ever used. I still have a ultra wide SCSI card and 2 devices on it. A 4mm tape backup and a old 4.3 gig wide HD I got on a trade so I guess I really have 5 HD in here
I do have a full tower case with 8 internal 3 1/2 bays and it's pretty full.