2 CDRW drives

[Dimitri]

I was wondering what the best way to set this up is. Currently they are on the same cable, one master, one slave. I plan on doing a lot of CD copying (one drive to the other). Should I have these on seperate cables for faster performance or does it matter?

 

[Chu]

Yes! If you plan on doing direct CD copying, then having them on seperate channels is a must if you want decent speeds.

-Chu

 

[idgaf13]

Seperate channels is the recommended setup by CDR manufacturers such as Plextor.
And it stands to reason ,If both CDRW's are on same channel the constant negotiation for the data to travel from the source drive to the copy drive is a logistical nightmare.
It is like traffic trying to travel in opposing directions at the same time on a single lane road.

Putting each CDRW on a seperate channel raises another problem ,the transfer speed on each channel is dictated by the slowest device on that channel. And CDR drives generally operate at 1/3 of the speed of Ultra ATA drives.

The negative side of having two CDR devices far outweighs the positive of having a single device.
Replace the second device with a Larger Hard Drive and build a library ,If you intend on making more than one copy of your data this will prove much faster.
I have over 50GB's of music on one drive and the ability to mix and match songs without having to shuttle discs back and forth is excellent.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: idgaf13
Seperate channels is the recommended setup by CDR manufacturers such as Plextor.
And it stands to reason ,If both CDRW's are on same channel the constant negotiation for the data to travel from the source drive to the copy drive is a logistical nightmare.
It is like traffic trying to travel in opposing directions at the same time on a single lane road.

Putting each CDRW on a seperate channel raises another problem ,the transfer speed on each channel is dictated by the slowest device on that channel. And CDR drives generally operate at 1/3 of the speed of Ultra ATA drives.

The negative side of having two CDR devices far outweighs the positive of having a single device.
Replace the second device with a Larger Hard Drive and build a library ,If you intend on making more than one copy of your data this will prove much faster.
I have over 50GB's of music on one drive and the ability to mix and match songs without having to shuttle discs back and forth is excellent.

I've heard that this is not true anymore; I've had devices of different ATA speeds on the same cable, and the BIOS reads them as what they are, even if they're different. I've not done any benchmarks though (I don't benchmark often at all), but it doesn't seem to affect speeds, not that I notice anyway.

 

[MrMet]

I have heard the same thing, The speed is dictated by the slowest device on the cable. Hopefully this is true about the newer boards adjusting for this because i prefer to have the cd roms on different cables, but for now on the system I built most recently The Hard drives are on one cable and the burner and dvd rom are on another

 

[fargus]

Add a controller card and everything can live on a channel by itself...

 

[Dimitri]

Originally posted by: fargus
Add a controller card and everything can live on a channel by itself...

That's what I did and the speed of burning from one cd to another more than doubled.

Thanks.