Drive setup advice

[rapid1]

I have 2 Maxtor UDMA66 HD's, an HP 8100 cdrw and a 48x cd drive to connect to 2 IDE channels. Currently, I connect the 2 hd's on IDE1 and the cd drives on IDE2. Using Nero5 burning software, it warns me about having both cds on the same channel for disc to disc copying. What is the best way to hook all of these drives together?
My main goal is to take advantage of my UDMA drives but I would like to be able to just burn cds quickly and effortlessly. Can I have my cake and eat it too? or not? I am looking for advice on the best way to connect all of these drives please...

thx

[Mntsnow]

For total optimization I would suggest picking up a "add-on" Ultra66 or Ultra100 controller card and run both HD's from it as masters. Then place the Burner as Master on one of the standard ports and the reader as Master on the other standard port.

But if you dont have room or the avalible IRQ for the add-on card you will need to choose which your going to be doing the most of...If CD to CD copying then Master HD, Slave CDreader, Master CDBurner Slave HD. If not to much CD to CD then HD/HD and Burner/Reader. The burners do much better when used as the Master on the cable.

[Ironforge]

If you want to make best with what you have currently, you can do the following.

Primary IDE Controller(IDE1):
Master: Maxtor HD
Slave: CD-RW Drive

Secondary IDE Controller(IDE2):
Master: Maxtor HD
Slave: 48x CD-ROM

This would maximize the performance of your Maxtor Hard drives and at the same time put the cd-rw and the cd-rom on a different IDE controller.

[rapid1]

thanks for the advice guys...since I would really rather have the hd performance, I will stick with both on IDE1 but will switch the burner to master and reader to slave...

thanks again

[spark25]

The Ide channel speed is determined by the slowest piece of equipment on the cable.I would go with both hard drives on one cable.Burner as master,reader as slave on another.You take a really big hit in performance putting a cd drive on the same cable as a hard drive.Kenwood true52x has a burst rate of pio mode 4 (16.6/MB/s) and a data transfer rate of 6.5 to7.8MB/s. UDMA66 is a bit faster than that.



[This message has been edited by spark25 (edited 08-28-2000).]