Setting up two CD-ROM's
 

This might be a elementary question, but could someone please assist with the setting up of my two CD-ROM's on the Secondary and Primary IDE channels??
My AV-Drive is in line with the one CD-drive on the Secondary channel and works well. When I install the second CD-drive on the Primary channel in line with my C-drive, Windows2000 does not see either the C-drive or the CD-ROM.
Setup:
C-drive: 40Gig Seagate;
D-drive: Pioneer A05
E-drive: 18Gig SCSI
R-drive: 80Gig Western Digital IDE for video.
Much obliged!
Ewald

I hope this isn't too basic an answer.

There are two ways to configure IDE drives for contemporary systems and one way for older systems. Drive configuration involves setting the jumpers on the back of the unit appropriately. Most drives have instructions right on the drive label but certainly in included instructions.

For contemporary systems, say most from the last 2-3 years, configure both drives, whatever type they are, as "cable select." This is usually marked CS on the jumpers. Cable select means that the position of the drives on the cable determines which one "comes first," that is, is considered drive 0. If both your drives are set to cable select already, try switching the two cable connectors from one drive to the other.

If that doesn't work, then configure one drive as the Master and the other as the Slave. In the case of the C drive, configure it as the Master. Position on the cable doesn't matter for master/slave configurations.

As a general rule of thumb, I consider it wiser to connect the two hard drives to one IDE channel and the two optical drives to the other. This will give the best throughput when burning from hard drive to CD/DVD burner and reduce the possibility of buffer underrun.

Actually Will quite the opposite is true, not to come off as a smarta$$, but if you try to burn "on the fly", it just won't go if the CD-ROM's are on the same bus or IDE channel. Ideally for the best throughput and performance, minimizing your headaches with IDE, on a new system this is how it should be optimally: Please note the "new" system comment. This may screw your registry up on an existing system because the drive letters would all get jacked up. OFcourse you can to a certain point control these drive letters or use a program (sorry, the name slips my mind) that will allow you total control of drive letter assignments.

The Primary IDE Channel, Master: This should always be your boot drive, OS, etc.

The Primary IDE Channel, Slave: This can be your CD-ROM or DVD-ROM, or DVD-R.

The Secondary IDE Channel, Master: This can be your secondary HDD for APPS, Video, Porn (j/k) or whatever.

The Secondary IDE Channel, slave: This is where you should place the second CD-ROM, DVD device.

Now on some newer motherboards or mobo hereinafter, you have a RAID controller or another set of two IDE Channels. These two are independent of the other two. If you plan to run RAID, Redundant Array of Independent Discs you can use 3 or more HDD that are of the same size and run what is called striping on them. Striping is the process whereby the drives though physically are three separate, they will logically be one large drive that will give you a total space of accumulated space between the three or more drives and about twice the access speed. Perfect for video where you need a constant, fast access time and stream.

Now if you opt to not use this, you utilize these two busses for your CD-ROMS by placing each as masters of each bus, optimal performance with this configuration.

With all that said, buffer underruns can still occur, this is caused by an interruption in the data stream which is required to burn a disc. The buffer is basically a cache of data that is collected or read ahead in order to keep the stream constant. If there is interruptions in ths buffer, like low memory, CPU loop time or other resources occur, the buffer becomes in a state known as underrun, meaning did get to store the read ahead data, therefore interrupting the data stream. Tada, you are now a proud owner of a coaster. CD-R Manufacturers have increase the buffer size to try to alleviate this condition, the other way is using software such as burn-proof or smart burn or similar to actually control drive mechanics sometimes to halt writing altogether in order to allow the buffer to fill up again. But, this doesn't always save your bacon. The most secured way is to burn only when the computer is not doing anything other than burning and to try to free up valuable computer resources. Lastly, make sure the source Cd is free of major scratches that will cause a read error and eventually a buffer underrun.

Ewald, sorry I was babbling about CD-ROMs I forgot to answer your question, Windows have to see the C- drive if you are booting to the OS, secondly if it does see neither, check the slave/master settings for both. IF set at something called CS or cable select, bypass this and create a slave and master. Check out your POST Power On Self Test and check to see if you are indeed detecting your HDD and CD-ROM if not you may want to set your BIOS setting to AUTO and allow it to detect.

Thanks Garret
I have the c:\ on the Primary IDE at the moment which is correct.
I then have my AV-drive on the Secondary IDE as master and my new Pioneer A05 as slave. The system is quite healthy this way - BUT - when I add my old HP 9100 as a slave on the Secondary IDE, Windows fails even to see the C:\ and will not boot. (The jumper on the HP 9100 is set to "slave")
I went into the CMOS settings to detect the drives but no go.
I just wonder whether there could be something wrong with the HP 9100 because I previously had the experience that Edition DV struggled with the drive to write to it.
At the moment therefore, the HP is just sitting in its bay, looking pretty but doing zero!
Ewald

With all the info you gave me especially after you said that it doesn't detect in the bios, the HP is DEAD. It may be conflict with something that makes you lose all IDE signal, hence c: is gone. I had a Phillips 2X write did that years back when it was on the system, the system wouldn't even POST.

Hi Garret
However, if I put the HP back onto the Secondary IDE as a "slave", it works. That now makes me think that the ATA ribbon might have a cold or something (SARS?) -)
Ewald

Garret:

Yes, you are right, successful burning on-the-fly is what I am after. But I am trying to accomplish that from hard disk to DVD writer, not from one optical device to the other.

Therefore, I want to allow as much overlap of channel operation as possible and that means the hard disk with the source material needs to be on one IDE channel and the target DVD writer needs to be on another. In a RAID configuration, the same thing would apply - the hard drives would be on the RAID controller on their own channel and the optical drives would be on a different channel.

In spite of having configured in this manner, I've not had any kind of burning problem that could be attributed to buffer underrun and I've never had a problem copying optical disks, whether it be DVD-to-DVD or CD-to-CD. I'm sure this is a combination of a fast processor, fast memory, hard drives with large caches, and good software.

Will