CD-RW

[Stein Inge Asmul]

I've just ordered the cheapest IDE-CD RW I could get my hands on. I'm aware that this is not the best backup-system to use, but I needed something cheap with large storage capacity.

I've got two questions: 1) Hooking it up, 2) The dos and don'ts of "burning".

1) Currently I've got one HD and one CD-ROM configured as master and slave respectively on IDE 1. Should I make the CD-RW my secondary master?

2) My PC is hooked up in a network, and currently has a "crowded" HD. What are the "golden rules" for effective "burning"? I assume that I should disconnect from the network, and that I should set aside an area of about 500Kb on my HD. What else should I remember?

[MR COMPUTER]

Basically,You are on the right track.Master on the secondary,turn off screen saver/etc,keep your drives clean,with a cleaning disk. Enjoy http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif

[Bleeding Edge]

You don't think he should set aside more drive space? Aren't there times when the only way to get the data turn burn is to write to the hard drive first. He mentioned his disk is almost full.

Looking around, I found these two sites. It's good for basic/beginner info.
http://www.octave.com/library/cdwritingtips.html
http://kaipo.com/tips.shtml

Do a seach of cd burning with one of the search engines. There's a lot of on the subject. You may come across one really good site. If you, do post it here okay?

[BBA]

Thats true only in certain circumstances.

If he is backing up the drives data, like he said, then he doesn't need temporary data storage on the hard drive, if he's copying straight from the CD-ROM he doesn't need it either, except its an easy way to make coasters if any hic'up occurs in the cd-rom reading process.

I have the CD-R and CD-ROM on the same ide channel and have had very little problems making direct CD to CD-R burns, so it is possible to do this without a data file on the hard disk.

BBA

[Vladimir]

I would put both cds on the sam ide.

[AuraEdge]

Why should it be on secondary master?
I currently have 2 HDD's on my primarys and a 44x CDrom on my secondary master and a 2/2/8 cd-rw on my secondary slave.....

[Stein Inge Asmul]

Vladimir: Everywhere else I've looked the advice is to hook it up to IDE 2. Apparently this is better because you always need to use several drives when performing a "burn" (source and destination drives).

Either you use the HD or the CD-ROM as source, and it is claimed that it is best to have "source" and "destination" on different IDE's. Thus it is better to have the HD and the CD-ROM on IDE 1 and the CD-RW on IDE 2. I assume that this is correct. Anybody know?

[Eli]

Sounds right to me. I think I read that only one device on each IDE channel can be accessed at a time, so by putting the reader and the writer on different channels, it should be possible to read and write at the same time. Good luck.