Plextor 708 -Should it be Master or Slave Drive?

[NoSmartz]

Am getting a Plextor 708 and was wondering should I replace my cd-rw drive with the plextor as the slave drive or should I replace my dvd-rom drive with the plextor in it's place as the master drive?
I thought it might be better to rip a movie from the dvd-rom drive and burn it with the Plextor.Only takes me 15 minutes to rip movie to my hard drive.Speedy.
Have seen a lot of review sites on burners and some recommend using the dvd burner as the primary rom drive.Have heard differnet things.
Need advice.Very newbie I am.


E

[Wickedest1]

I would place the Plextor on the secondary IDE as master and the dvd-rom as the slave on the same IDE. To keep maximum transfer rates from the harddrive to your dvd writer you want them as masters on different IDE's. Keeping a higher transfer rate helps reduce buffer-underrun errors as well as increasing writing speed because the drive doesn't have to slow down from a lack of data transfer from the harddrive. Because the dvd-rom would not likely be used at the same time as the Plextor I don't see a reason not to put it on the same IDE as the slave. However to maintain the highest transfer rates from the dvd-rom it's probably still best to keep it as a slave on the secondary IDE rather than on the primary IDE with the harddrive. Hope this helps and any other ideas would be appriciated as I am new to using dvd writers myself.

[dmakogon]

I doubt you'll see any noticeable performance difference between master and slave if two optical drives are on the same IDE controller.

The real concern is mixing optical drives with a hard drive, since the IDE controller will only work as fast as the slowest device on its ribbon cable. So... if you buy some snazzy 7200RPM ULTRA133 hard drive w/8MB buffer and put it on the same controller as your ATA33 (or ATA66) DVD drive, your hard disk performance will drop significantly.


Regards,
David

[tazdevl]

I doubt you'll see any noticeable performance difference between master and slave if two optical drives are on the same IDE controller.

If you're doing disc to disc copying, you most certainly will.

[lgmayka]

If you're doing disc to disc copying, you most certainly will.

So if one does disk-to-disk copying, the DVD burner should be master and the DVD-ROM drive should be slave?

[tazdevl]

If you're doing disc to disc copying, you most certainly will.

So if one does disk-to-disk copying, the DVD burner should be master and the DVD-ROM drive should be slave?

I'd put the optical drives each on a different channel.

So you could do...
Primary IDE
Hard Drive Master
DVD Slave

Secondary IDE
708A Master

With respect to jumpering... a lot depends on the burner in question. My old Yamaha CRW-F1 didn't like being anything other than a secondary master, 510A didn't like being a master on any IDE channel. The 708A, you can put it anywhere and it will work fine.

[Wickedest1]

If you do a lot of disk to disk copying then yes, the drives should be on different IDE channels but if you usually copy to the harddrive first then burn I would stick with my original suggestion and put the Plextor as secondary master and the dvd-rom as secondary slave. With this configuration you will have the best data transfer rates to and from the harddrive but yes disk to disk copying will be a problem.

[NoSmartz]

There seems to be a lot of options out there.I've never had any major problems copying disc to disc when both drives were on the secondary IDE.
I suppose since I'll be copying straight to the hard drive I won't have any probs with the 708 in place of the cdrw as the master.We'll see.

Thanx for the input

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[Wickedest1]

The other option nobody mentioned, if you want to keep performance all the way around and you have an empy PCI slot, is to buy an ATA controler card which will give you two more IDE channels. Then you could have all your devices as masters with no conflicts.

[NoSmartz]

With my budget I'll have to stick with just buying the Plextor 708 and wingin' it.What does an ATA controller go for anyway?I'm having to buy it online 'cause it's $150.00 cheaper than at best buy or any other store that carries it.Checked my master slave settings and they go as follows

Primary IDE
Master WD 40gig

Secondary IDE
master DVD-ROM
slave cd-rw

With these settings I've disc to disc't too many cd's to count without a problem for 19 months.
Since I can't disc to disc movies I'll have to rip to the hard drive then copy from there.
Should I just replace the cdrw with the plextor708 or master the plextor and slave the dvd-rom?


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[Wickedest1]

When burning a dvd, particularly at 8X, the bandwidth required is a lot higher than a CD even at 40X. A DVD at 8X has the ability to write up to 10.8MB/sec and a CD at 40X has can only write up to 6MB/sec (from plextors website). To make sure that the Plextor gets the bandwidth it needs to burn at the full 8X it should be set as the master so that it gets priority over the dvd-rom as well as helping prevent buffer underrun errors. Also I see compusa has ATA controller cards for $49.99 see here:
http://www.compusa.com/products/product ... 0&pfp=cat3

I'm a Canadian living in South Korea so I'm a little out of the loop when it comes to finding prices in the U.S. you might be able to do better than the compusa price.

[DVD_ADDICT]

I had the same problem regarding disc to disc copying. I just received my PLEXTOR 708, PROMISE ATA 133 CONTROLLER CARD & 10 PACK OF RITEK DVD+RW from Mwave.com.
Mwave.com had a special last week $201.00 for the PLEXTOR 708. The price this week is $209.95. Compuplus.com has it for $207.00 beige and black is $208.00.

Check out the cost of the PROMISE CONTROLLER CARD only $33.00 OEM
http://direct.mwave.com/mwave/ProdCTRL- ... RL-PRO.hmx?

My current pc set up is like this:
PRIMARY MASTER - MAIN 60 GB HD
PRIMARY SLAVE - TOSHIBA DVD-ROM
SECONDARY MASTER - PLEXTOR CD BURNER
SECONDARY SLAVE - 2ND 60 GB HD

I'm keeping the dvdrom because it rips fast.
I will be adding in the controller card. What would be the best setting for my PLEXTOR 708? On the promise controller card or on secondary master or primary slave? I'm a newbie to dvd burning. I'm moving on up from making vcd's and svcd's. Thanks in advance.

[NoSmartz]

When you recieved your plextor 708 what did it come with?Was it a retail box or was it a bare drive?At a retail place here I can get it for $350.00.Online I found it for $191.00 bare drive only.
Here in texas there are tons of places to get the ata controllers but price is usually the main point.I have a friend in the pc build/fix game and I can usually get stuff from him at cost.Reasonable.I can't get the plextor from him for as cheap as some places on the net though.$33.00 at mwave seems to be the cheapest I can find a an ATA for.Surprised newegg wasn't cheaper.Being in Korea should be an advantage in obtaining up to date merchandise were as here we have to wait a few months for stuff to arrive or trying to get it off ebay.

I will also keep my dvd-rom 'cause of speed.My cdrw is a 24x but it isn't as efficient as the rom drive.Think I'll use this as setup

Primary IDE
Master WD 40 gig

Secondary IDE
Master plextor 708
slave dvd-rom



E

[Wickedest1]

I will be adding in the controller card. What would be the best setting for my PLEXTOR 708? On the promise controller card or on secondary master or primary slave?

If you have an older motherboard but a newer hard drive you might get a speed boost from your hard drive by putting it as the primary master on the promise card but if your hard drive ATA matches or is less than your motherboards ATA (example, they are both ATA 66, or the motherboard is ATA 66 and the harddrive is ATA 33) then it doesn't matter where you put the hard drive. But if your hard drive is ATA 133 and your motherboards IDE is only ATA 100 I'd move the hard drive to the new Promise card. If you leave your hard drive on the motherboard primary IDE put the Plextor on the Promise primary IDE as master and the dvd-rom on the Promise secondary IDE as master. I've had some experience with promise cards and they tend to handle data transfer a little better than onboard IDE so I would fill up the Promise card first.

I'm using a Plextor 708UF (usb 2 external) right now and it was too expensive. It was a full retail setup, box and setup disc. In Korea brands like LG and Samsung (both Korean companies) are easy to find locally but Plextor was almost imposible. If it's made outside Korea it seems to be expensive and can be hard to find. I got mine from Data2000 in Seoul.

[NoSmartz]

so you do have the jump on newer hardware in korea.We haven't even heard of the plextor external here.Doesn't exist in the states yet.I wondered about the retail over bare unit cause I don't think I'll need the software that comes with it like easy cd etc....Garbage.Just need the unit plus setup and that's it.No excess.Software costs extra.I save tons of $ by ordering online.Only way to go.

[aviationwiz]

sWe haven't even heard of the plextor external here.

You mean the 708UF? I saw it in Best Buy when I went in the other day.Here

[NoSmartz]

You are correct aviationwiz.They do have it at bestbuy.Evidentally I've been looking at the external the whole time.The price I saw when I was there sunday was $350.00 and that is the external.My bad.But that's $350.00 I ain't got.

Plextor Internal,here I come.

By the way Aviationwiz,my mother arrived in cape town just a few hours ago for a months vacation.She's proudly Rhodesian.Here family still lives in South Africa.


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[DVD_ADDICT]

My PLEXTOR 708 was retail....I haven't opened up the box yet.....My motherboard is new I have a SHUTTLE AV49N W/PENT 4 2.4 MHZ CHIP. Thanks for the advice.

www.mwave.com has the PLEXTOR 708UF EXTERNAL for $298.68.

www.compuplus.com had the PLEXTOR 708 INTERNAL FOR $207.00 beige and black is $208.00.

[NoSmartz]

found a bare only drive at diymicro online for $192.00(beige).
It doesn't come with ide cable,mounting screws,a DVD+RW disc or the box.I'll just use my cdrw drive screws in place of it along with the ide cable already in use.It does come with the software though and a full warranty.Budget minded individual eh?Bought my hard drive that way and saved a few pennies.We'll see how it works out.

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[NNH]

i set my plextor v1.03 at master on a bytecc me-320usb external drive both connections verified at usb high speed but i cant select dvd+r 8x record mode under nero 6.023. I'm using memorex dvd+r 4x disks from amazon. Highest setting burned at was 4x. I thought these disks are capable of 8x. Is there a way to verified or find out what dvdr media type i am using.
thnks

[Wickedest1]

DVDIdentifier is a program you can try to identify the disc. I see aviationwhiz has a new post up on it. http://www.cdrlabs.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=13558[url][/url]

[DVD_ADDICT]

I got my plextor 708A set as master on my controller card. I've only burned 1 dvd+rw which came out fine. I used dvd decrypter to author and burn. Media I used was RITEK DVD+RW.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1 TOSHIBA 1612 DVDROM
1 TOSHIBA 1712 DVD ROM
1 PLEXTOR 48X24X48 CD BURNER
1 PLEXTOR 40X12X40 CD BURNER
1 PLEXTOR 708A DUAL FORMAT DVD BURNER