Joel <Joel@NoSpam.com> wrote
> Pete <not@this.address> wrote

>> I have a typical P4 2.6 system with 2 IDE connectors on my
>> motherboard. I have 2 DVD burners and 1 IDE hard disk (main system
>> drive) on my machine. All the drives are installed and working OK
>> but I get problems with access speeds / bandwidth when I use the
>> burner that is on the same channel as the hard disk.

>> I have heard that for multiple simultaneous burners it's best that
>> the burners are on separate IDE channels. I happen to have an old
>> ABIT hot rod 100 raid controller card and was going to hook the main
>> IDE drive up to this so that I could have the burners connected as
>> masters on each of the ide channels on the motherboard and no
>> secondary devices connected at all.

>> Does this make sense?

> I think you heard it right.

'think' again.

> It's better/safer to have DVD on separated channel,
> so when both DVDs running at same time (like copying
> from one DVD to other) they won't have to fight each other.

In practice that is normally done with something like
Nero or Roxio EMC and they handle that situation fine.

>> Do I need to change any bios settings to set
>> the abit raid PCI card up as a master device?

>> Is there a better way of doing this?

> It works exactly like installing one or multiple hard drive.

> - Channel 1

> - Hard Drive = set jumper to MASTER
> - 1st DVD = set jumper to SLAVE

> - Channel 2

> - DVD = Single_IDE (usually no jumper, or default)

>> Will the Abit hot rod 100 card be OK?

>> Will accessing my prmary hard disk through the
>> Abit card degrade hard disk access speeds?

>> Will using a card like the Abit raid controller on the PCI bus degrade
>> other PCI or AGP devices because it may be a bandwidth hog?

>> Please feel free to respond to any or all of the points i have raised.

>> Any other advice / issues?

> I used to have external IDE controller on older system, and had up to
> 7-8 IDE devices. But now hard drives are getting larger and cheaper,
> I don't need more than 2-3 hard drives so no longer need external
> EIDE card to know how well it work with larger and faster hard drive.

> And with 3 IDE devices you don't need external IDE controller, you
> should be able to have up to 4-IDE devices using mboard's build-in
> IDE channels. If you need more then you can have up to 2 SATA
> devices (I just learn about the SATA yesterday).

It shows. Plenty of motherboards can handle more than 2 sata now.