DVD drives

Dan Dowd · Post by **Dan Dowd** » 17 Jan 2005 6:52 am

Is there a best way to connect 2 DVD drives in a computer that also has 2 Hard Drives. Should the DVD drives be on the same IDE cable or split between a Hard Drive and DVD. Which DVD Drive should be the master and slave. EX: C Drive master and DVD Drive slave on IDE 1. Or both DVD drives on IDE 2. Hope I explained this properly.

Jim Smith · Post by **Jim Smith** » 17 Jan 2005 7:05 am

I set mine up with the hard drives as masters on both IDE channels and the DVD/CD drives as slaves. One reason is that you can only boot from devices on the first channel, so if you ever need to boot from a DVD/CD one needs to be on the first channel.

Jack Stoner · Post by **Jack Stoner** » 17 Jan 2005 7:50 am

Put them on separate channels, if it's available. I'm experimenting with that now (I'm picking up a PCI IDE controller so I can split a DVD/CD burner and a CD burner on separate controllers. Nero 6 (and Roxio V7) have the capability to burn to two drives at one time. Right now mine are both on the same channel and when I try to dual burn it fails. The connector for the hard drive cable is no long enough to reach to one of the CD drives so I can't use that (and I have a second hard drive that I hook up periodically to do a backup).

Almost all new systems use the "cable select" rather than the older master/slave strapping. My P4, Windows XP (Pro) Gateway system is also set up with cable select. I tried the master/slave with the CD drives and it didn't help the dual burning issue.

Dickie Whitley · Post by **Dickie Whitley** » 17 Jan 2005 8:00 am

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Ray Minich · Post by **Ray Minich** » 17 Jan 2005 11:53 am

The SIIG IDE expansion cards seem to behave better than the Promise cards. I had a Promise Ultra 100 IDE card really give me a hard time several months ago. Had to pull it. Went to the SIIG card and no problems. Just my experience.

Dan Dowd · Post by **Dan Dowd** » 17 Jan 2005 6:18 pm

Jim, Jack and Dickie Thats the way I was thinking of going. At present I have both the DVD drives on IDE 2. The reason for the question is I have a 8 month old Pentium 4 3.2 ghz with front mounted Audigy and extra USB ports with 2 Hard drives. The 425 watt power supply +12 volts is running down at +10.2 volts and case also running hot. Intel has a monitoring program for their mother board and it gave me several alarms for temp and voltage. I just purchased a new 550 watt power supply and a new case for extra cooling with extra cooling fans and want to make sure the DVD drives are installed properly. Jack I have Nero and Roxio ver 7 and was not aware you could run the DVD at the same time. I will look in to this. Thanks for the help guys. Ray I would prefer not to add any more cards at this time as its pretty loaded up now.<FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by Dan Dowd on 17 January 2005 at 07:30 PM.]</p></FONT>

Dan Dowd · Post by **Dan Dowd** » 18 Jan 2005 1:20 pm

Jim I forgot to mention that I changed the BIOS to boot from my DVD G: drive 1st and then C: Drive. This saved the day a couple of times when I had a problem with XP Pro.

Jack Stoner · Post by **Jack Stoner** » 18 Jan 2005 3:14 pm

As mentioned, I picked up a Belkin Ultra ATA/133 PCI card at CompuUSA yesterday. I installed it this morning and with Nero 6, I was able to burn to two burners at the same time. Worked great.

I have the original CD burner and a DVD-ROM on the Motherboard IDE channel. I installed my DVD/CD burner (a NEC ND2500A) on the new IDE channel.

Bill Crook · Post by **Bill Crook** » 22 Jan 2005 7:54 pm

Jack Stoner...............

When I installed my DVD burner, It went out and removed all of my CD burner software !!

It seems like the DVD software wants to be the only burner on the system. This hasen't caused me any problems onced I figured out was was going on.

I now have a DVD player as my F: drive,and a DVD burner as my E: drive. I can copy from my F: drive directly to my E: drive (Diskcopy) for makeing copies of AVI and other data files.

For you folks that wish to make copies of "copy protected" DVD's (read this as movies) you must first save them to your HD then write them out to the DVD burner.

I don't advocate this as it is ill-legel to do this, but for reasons the consumer may have to retain original material, this is a means to preserve or re-load his/her computer,shoud it crash or get infected.

I will NOT offer any information as to how to do this to the average consumer, but as I am sure,folks that are computer savy understand my statements. I won't offer advice as to how to copy a rented movie, I am of the idea............ Onced a data pice is viewable/readable/audioble on my screen/computer, It's mine to do with as I want.

I am NOT in the business of rippin' flicks or such,but only need to preserve (IMHO) classic data for my own use.

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Jack Stoner · Post by **Jack Stoner** » 23 Jan 2005 3:34 am

I have two CD burning programs on my PC and they co-exist without any problems. I know others that do too. The only issue is the UDF formatting program - you can only have one installed. UDF programs are programs such as Roxio's "Direct CD" or Nero's "InCD", Sonic's "DLA".

DVD rippers that allow copying of copy protected DVD's are illegal, whether you copy direct to another DVD or "copy" to the hard drive.

Dave Potter · Post by **Dave Potter** » 23 Jan 2005 4:55 am

<< The 425 watt power supply +12 volts is running down at +10.2 volts and case also running hot. Intel has a monitoring program for their mother board and it gave me several alarms for temp and voltage. I just purchased a new 550 watt power supply and a new case for extra cooling with extra cooling fans and want to make sure the DVD drives are installed properly.

I had the same problem initially when I built my current P4 3.2 box. Switched to a larger case, which brought temps down in a major way. I also use that Intel monitoring utility. I now have a total of 6 cooling fans inside my case, including the PSU and CPU ones.

I understand you just bought a new PSU, so this won't be of immediate interest, but, for info, but Antec offers a 550W power supply with a device included that fits into a standard 5.25" case slot (like a drive) and allows you to set your 12, 5 and 3.3V levels at the front of the case. It also has a cutout to put a floppy drive in it, which I've done. Works well.

Dan Dowd · Post by **Dan Dowd** » 25 Jan 2005 3:40 pm

Dave, I installed a Aspire 550 Watt power Supply and also a new case that allows for additional fans which I have installed also. The 12 volt supply is now 12.625 and steady as are all the ather voltages as monitored by the intel program. The mysterious shutdowns have totally been eliminated and all the temps are also in the mid green. Its is also much quiter as the fans are low noise . The power supply even has color lights in it which can be changed with a sritch on the PS. I dont know what purpose the the lights are for but it looks like it something from a SciFi movie. The best $85 I have spent on computer stuff.