Sony DRU500AX high cpu utilization during writing

[Vmax]

I have a Sony DRU500AX. Because I have also 2 hdds, a dvd-rom and a cd-rw, I have run out of ide ports, so I bought a Maxtor PCI ATA133 IDE controller, and I connected the Sony there.. During booting up, the Maxtor controller finds the Sony and identifies it as using UDMA2 mode.. however, during writing, I see 100% cpu utilization... I havent tried to connect it to the motherboards' ide ports yet... Is there any way to remedy this?

[CDRecorder]

I have found that this card doesn't work well with optical drives, and I have had this type of problem. I would suggest that you put your hard drive(s) on the Maxtor ATA controller and put the optical drives on the motherboard's controller.

[mathisan]

hey vmax,

liteonguy is right. from my experience, it is not a good idea to put optical drives, especially writers on a secondary IDE controller running off the PCI bus. not only does your CPU utilization suffer, but the whole comp slows to a crawl sometimes. i did what you did when i got my promise controller and then i switched the hdds to the promise and i run all optical drives off my onboard IDE. it should speed things up for you drastically. also make sure DMA is enabled in windows for all your drives.

later

[CDRecorder]

Interesting that you mention Promise controllers, mathisan. The Maxtor ATA133 controller is actually a rebadged Promise Ultra133 TX2.