On Sun, 15 Oct 2006 16:57:46 +1000, Rod Speed thoughtfully wrote:

> jaster <jaster@home.net> wrote
>> Pete 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?
>
>>> 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?
>
>>> 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?
>
>> I don't know about the Abit raid controller card but you only have the
>> one HD.
>
>> I thought the reccommendation was to put similiar speed devices on the
>> same IDE channels.
>
> Nope, that is VERY obsolete.
>
>> HD is on PIO 4 or ATA 100/133 while DVDs are usually ATA 33/66 at best.
>
> That last isnt right with the latest 16X burners.

What makes you think he has the latest 16x burners?
Aren't the PIO 4 DVD burners running off SATA interfaces?

>
>> Putting a ATA 100 with ATA 33 on the
>> same IDE slows traffic on the channel.
>
> Nope, hasnt done for a VERY long time now.

Well I have 48x CDR and 12x DVD on IDE2 ATA33/ATA66 respectively.
2 ATA100 HDs on an ATA 100 IDE1 mb

>
>> HDs on IDE1 and DVDs on IDE2.
>
>> From a use point of view how frequent will you use you HD versus using
>> either DVD?
>
>>> Please feel free to respond to any or all of the points i have raised.
>
>>> Any other advice / issues?