cdrw clarification

[fishboy]

Forgive the novice question but Ive never had a burner before. When setting these drives up, does it replace the existing CD Rom Drive or is the burner set up as a slave to the CD ROM. If it replaces the CD RoM then that makes me sad because I have a perfectly good 32x Sony Drive that I would hate to see become a door stop. Thanks

[Glytzhkof]

Is this a SCSI burner or an IDE burner? Since you talk about setting it up as slave I'll assume it is an IDE burner. If so I'd definately make the new burner the master on IDE 2. If you have only one hard drive I'd put the old CD-ROM as slave to the hard drive on IDE 1. If you already have two hard drives set up on IDE 1, I'd set up the hard drives and the CD players on different IDE's. I.E:
IDE 1: HD 1 (master), HD2 (slave)
IDE 2: CD-RW (master), CD-ROM (slave).
Beware that there are a lot of different opinions on how such setups should be configured!

[fishboy]

That was helpful but I still need to know if the burner replaces the need for the CD Rom drive or are they used together. I dont have the cdrw drive but it would be IDE. Thanks

[Glytzhkof]

Fishboy, here are some clarifications:
* It is possible and useful to use both a CD-ROM and a CD-RW together in the same machine.
* A CD-ROM is usually much faster than a CD-RW and should thus be used for installations.
* A CD-RW generally has a higher quality laser than a CD-ROM. Use it for backups and "difficult CD's" (and of course to burn CD's)
* With both a CD-ROM and a CD-RW in a system it is possible to copy a CD directly from the CD-ROM to the CD-RW. This is not reliable with IDE burners though and will most likely fail.
* It is not necessary to have both a CD-ROM and a CD-RW to copy a CD (just copy the CD to the hard drive first and then burn the CD).
* Lastly: I have both a CD-ROM and a CD-RW and it is a great mix. When I use software that access reference libraries on CD's I can have two CD's in at the same time. Less swapping.

I've probably forgotten a lot...

[blondini]

when setting up the(ide) cdrw and cdrom together make the faster of the two the secondary master and the slower secondary slave ie. i have an udma2 24x cdrom as master and my Acer(6206A) cdrw pio4 as slave also untick dma in device manager for the cdrw this has given me a very stable environment for coping(told this by the techs at acer)

[Ed_S]

Another reason for keeping both is that using the CD-R for everything is bound to effect it's lifespan and/or reliability. I use mine only for burning and reading the difficult cd's.
Why use a slow and expensive CD-R to do the same things that a cheap & fast CD-Rom will do?

[fishboy]

Thanks for all the responses. I am debating my need for one and how I can sneak the bill past the wife!

[nilknarf]

Ask her if she wants to make her own CD's.

Just a thought...