Sluggish DVD drives

[Superoo]

I have got the following build up and running and apart from a cabling mess, most things seem to be OK:

Asus A8N-E SLI Premium
AMD 939 X2 4400
Antec P180
Antec TruePower2 550
2GB 3200 Kingston
Leadtek Winfast 256MB 7800GT Extreme
2 x WD 250MB Sata II 16M
LG 4167B DVD RW
LG 16x DVD
Creative Audigy Value
Logitech X530
19" Viewsonic VX930b

When I began loading software, I initially noticed that the DVD drives seemed to be operating on the slow side. On some CD's, autoplay was taking 20-25 seconds to start and there seemed to be pauses during read operations. Audio CD's and DVD appear to work OK. I then found the nforce 4 IDE drivers that came with the motherboard and thought that installing them would probably be required.

That turned out to be a BIG mistake and the drives from then on intermittently stopped working and caused all sorts of issues with Windows not shutting down etc. I then read of some of the dramas with those IDE drivers on here and tried to uninstall - still no good. Re-loaded windows again without the drivers and things now seem OK apart from the sluggish drive operation. According to the IDE interface they are both running in UDMA 2 mode.

Any ideas what I could check? Could these LG drives just be slow or is it likely to be and IDE interface issue (I'm now using the MS drivers).

Thanks.

 

[bendixG15]

As far as I am concerned..
Autoplay ALWAYS takes too long...no what you got for a box.

 

[Auric]

My H-LG 4160 is UDMA 4. Is an 80-conductor cable used? Are the drives correctly jumpered and positioned on the cable (Master/Slave with former being at end of cable)? Is the correct mode configured from CMOS Setup?

 

[Superoo]

I currently have both drives installed as master drives. The DVD burner is installed on the primary IDE interface with the 80 conductor cable. The DVD-ROM is installed on the secondary IDE interface with a 40 conductor cable. My questions are:

1) Is it best to keep them this way (on separate PRI/SEC IDE interfaces) or should I connect both to the PRI IDE interface with the 80 conductor cable in master/slave mode?

2) If I keep them on separate channels, I have read that I should install both drives on the end connector of the IDE cable (not the middle) but have the drive with the 80 conductor cable set as master and the drive on the 40 wire conductor set as slave. Is this correct?

And I thought IDE cables were a no brainer.......

 

[Auric]

Assuming these are the only IDE devices, yes, ideally they remain on seperate channels and each on the end of their own cables however each should also be jumpered as master. The master/slave relationship only applies to each channel so there are no slaves in this case. Also, there is no reason to use 40 wire cables. Even if the device is not UDMA 4 capable, the extra conductors with a 80 wire cable can only help by reducing cross-talk.

 

[Bobthelost]

Check you're not running PIO, although you'd see massive CPU utilisation whenever you try to do anything with the drives as well as slow speed.

 

[Superoo]

Both drives are running in UDMA 2. Is there a problem using a 40 conductor cable on the SEC IDE connector and an 80 conductor cable on the PRI IDE?
Only 2 IDE cables were supplied with the motherboard - one of each type.

 

[Auric]

No problem with that. Assuming everything is hooked up as above and the drives are not defective, &c. I can only guess it is a flaky chipset and/or drivers. For more knowledge and experience with this specific problem you may try posting in AT's mobo section, cdfreaks, ocforums and Asus support.