fitting a DVD writer to my PC need help please

[happyhero]

Hi I have bought this drive http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/126226.

I have fitted several drives and even built a PC in the past but need some advice. I am a little rusty so forgive anything I get wrong and please correct me.

In my PC it has two IDE connections on the motherboard both used, IDE1 has my HD on it and a DVD ROM on it as slave. The cable is the fine ribbon kind, I believe it is an 80 way ribbon as oposed to a 40. IDE2 has a CD writer on it set as master and the cable is bigger gauge ie I think that one is 40 way.

Now I have replaced the DVD ROM with the new DVD writer mentioned at the top of my post and set it as slave, but someone mentioned to me in a previous posting that you should not mix optical drives with harddrives on the same cable but it has always been that the DVD ROM was on the same 80 way cable as the HD and it seemed to work fine.

I have just tried the new DVD writer with a bought music CD and it works fine.

So now the questions.

If one IDE can take an 80 way cable would it probably follow that both could?

What would be the benefit if I changed the 40 way one for an 80 way one?

Would the CD writer that has been in this PC since 2002 when I bought the PC be ok with an 80 way cable?

If I should not mix optical with harddrives how come it all seems to be working and why should I not mix them? Surely the old DVD ROM being a disk reader would have been an optical drive.

Would there be a reason to put both CD writer and DVD writer on the same cable and should it be a 40 way or 80 way for best results?

Probably got more questions when I get some answers to these, sorry.

Any help appreciated.

 

[Igorian]

Hi I have bought this drive http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/126226.

I have fitted several drives and even built a PC in the past but need some advice. I am a little rusty so forgive anything I get wrong and please correct me.

In my PC it has two IDE connections on the motherboard both used, IDE1 has my HD on it and a DVD ROM on it as slave. The cable is the fine ribbon kind, I believe it is an 80 way ribbon as oposed to a 40. IDE2 has a CD writer on it set as master and the cable is bigger gauge ie I think that one is 40 way.

Now I have replaced the DVD ROM with the new DVD writer mentioned at the top of my post and set it as slave, but someone mentioned to me in a previous posting that you should not mix optical drives with harddrives on the same cable but it has always been that the DVD ROM was on the same 80 way cable as the HD and it seemed to work fine.

I have just tried the new DVD writer with a bought music CD and it works fine.

So now the questions.

If one IDE can take an 80 way cable would it probably follow that both could?

Yes

What would be the benefit if I changed the 40 way one for an 80 way one?

That would depend on the devices connected to the cable. A 40 core cable will only allow data transfer rates up to 33Mb/s whereas an 80 core cable allows higher transfer rates (as long as the devices are capable). The extra 40 cores are connected to ground and eliminate crosstalk between the data cores. In theory, it's better to use 80 core in all cases as data transfer will be more reliable.

Would the CD writer that has been in this PC since 2002 when I bought the PC be ok with an 80 way cable?

Yes

If I should not mix optical with harddrives how come it all seems to be working and why should I not mix them? Surely the old DVD ROM being a disk reader would have been an optical drive.

If your IDE controller has independant device timing, it won't be an issue. However, if this is not the case, and you will need to research your board, the fastest device will only run as fast as the slowest device.

Would there be a reason to put both CD writer and DVD writer on the same cable and should it be a 40 way or 80 way for best results?

Having two optical devices on the same channel generally works fine, however, you may have problems if you try and copy audio or video from one to the other. An 80 way cable should help as will a controller with independant timing.

Probably got more questions when I get some answers to these, sorry.

Any help appreciated.[/quote]

 

[happyhero]

Ok cheers for all the answers Igorian, so I am tempted to change my 40 way cable to an 80 so that they are both 80's but what combination would you go for if you had the HD and 2 writers?

If I had 2 optical drives on the same cable wouldn't the software used to do a backup for example cope with this, with some sort of memory feature (cache or something not sure what you call it)?

It seems I am a little stuck for an ideal situation as two opticals on same cable are not great and optical with HD is not great thats why I ask what combination you would go for.

As for the independant device timing I think this may be hard for me to find out unless you know a way. Is there possibly a way to prove it exists or doesn't thats not too involved? I don't like the idea that one drive may slow another down as I always buy in hope to maximise speeds.

 

[Igorian]

If you have two opticals and a single HD, It's generally recommended to have HD + Optical on one channel and Optical on the second. Depending on your system, you are unlikly to see much of performance drop in visible terms. It's usually only a problem if you are copying audio and video from one optical to the other, so if you aren't doing this, you will probably find that 2 opticals on the same channel will work fine.

However, performance also depends on the compatibility and quality of all components in your system.

 

[Oobie]

the best way i found is to set the HDD and the optical drive to cable select not slave/master.

 

[Igorian]

the best way i found is to set the HDD and the optical drive to cable select not slave/master.

The post is 3 months old.