Master/slave setup recommendations

[MajorBobL]

Taking a computer repair course through the local cc and have to do a presentation on master/slave setup. Going to use my system as an example. Current setup is: Hard Drive is master, CD-ROM slave on one IDE, CD-RW alone on other IDE. Would this be the optimum setup? Or would a different configuration be better? By the way, this works well, execpt I do have problems burning a CD direct from another CD. Thanks.

[rextex]

The hard drive should be alone as master on the primary ide cable.
The cd and cd-rw on the secondary ide.

That is because hard drives are faster than cd's.If you set the hard drive on the same cable the speed of the hard drive may be limited to the speed of the slower device.
That is what the answer will be in the books.
(But some of the latest systems and hardware are not limited by this anymore).

Per the cd's:
Some mfg. manuals tell you to set the cd-rw to the master on the channel.Setting it to master is supposed to be more reliable for burning cd's.But if there is a problem recognizing the cd-rw for some reason set it as slave.That way you can always have access to cd if need be.The reason why it may not be recognized on some set-ups (I believe) is that generally cd-rw's are newer devices and the O.S. may not have all the information files to recognize it as a cd device.

[sdswann68]

which is the best...?Either way will work, but normally it's best to set the HDD up by itself, unless you what to chain another HDD to it.
The problem with the burner is common with older/slower burners.(called buffer under-run)
Newer burners really don't see this as much...
Another problem my be your burner doesn't like being setup as a slave if it is...try switching them around (make the cd-rom the slave and the burner the master.
This isn't always the answer for the fix, but what you described is a somewhat common problem...

Goodluck with class..

[MajorBobL]

Thanks guys. Here's a little more info. OS is WindowsMe, the CD-RW is AOpen 1232 (12/32/10), and my HDD is Western Digital, 20G, 7200rpm.

FYI: I got this info from TECHEXTREME:
"Due to the nature of the IDE interface, you should not have two CD drives sharing the same IDE connector. While you can connect two CD drives together on the same IDE channel, it is recommended that you at least make the CD-RW drive the master drive. This way, you won’t incur in the severe performance penalties that come with running a CD-RW drive as a slave, whether it is another CD drive or a disk drive. The ideal solution would be to have a single IDE channel dedicated to the CD-RW, but if this is not possible, you can use it in a master-slave setup."

So, I'll try this and see what happens.

[skuz]

This issue is one of the most mysterious around. Here's the way I learned :

2 HD(CD) on same channel : both will have the same access time as the slowest.

1HD and one CD : won't slow down the HD since HD is at address 13 and CD at 14 (?)

1HD(CD) ATA33 and 1HD(CD) ATA66 : will run at their respective speed when accessed.

1HD(CD) PIO and 1HD(CD) UDMA : UDMA is killed and reduced to PIO

[HRM]

I might be wrong, but if you have a burnproof CDR, you can not use the burn on the fly method if the two CD are on the same cable. You have to set them on separate ones, like you did. I personally do not use the burn on the fly setting, but I don't burn too much. I am sure there are people who say one way is bester than the other. I know it would be faster to burn on the fly if the quality is the same.

I guess I am just trying to point out that I think you can't Burn on the fly if they are on the same channel.

[MajorBobL]

Thanks guys. Skuz: I don't understand your post: "1HD(CD) ATA33 and 1HD(CD) ATA66 : will run at their respective speed when accessed. " What does this mean? HRM. Since I have problems with on-the-fly burning, I don't. Been saving to a temp file, then burning, works well.

[skuz]

It means the ATA33 drive will transfer at 33 MB/s, and the ATA66 at 66 MB/s, the 33 one won't slow down the 66.

But this is quite misty as I said, I'd like to see a site which has numbers to show different configurations' performance.

[araaraara]

Here's how I have mine setup:

Primary Master: 60gb Maxtor HD ATA100(hd supports ATA133)
Secondary Master: I/O Magic CDRW ATA33
Secondary Slave: I/O Magic DVD ATA33

This seems to work fine and I get good performance from all 3 devices, even when I'm using the 2 CD's at the same time. I can copy on the fly just fine without any problems.

[MajorBobL]

Thanks to everyone for your input.