Originally posted by: monkyskunk
I see that these sale prices are still in effect, so I am about to order up a few cables myself, but before I do could someone please tell me right quick if for my cd-rom drives would it be better to get a single device cable for each or would one of the dual device cable suffice? Thanks
Originally posted by: BigEdMuustaffa
Originally posted by: monkyskunk
I see that these sale prices are still in effect, so I am about to order up a few cables myself, but before I do could someone please tell me right quick if for my cd-rom drives would it be better to get a single device cable for each or would one of the dual device cable suffice? Thanks
Well let me start by saying yes and no. I know that sounds confusing, let me explain. Depending on the type of case you have and the distances between the drives and the motherboard. Are you using flat cables now? Also, what length cables are you using now? Also, depending on what you plan on doing with them, and what type of CD-Rom drives you have. If one drives is a burner and the other drive is fast enough, and you want to do ON THE FLY burning, that is, from the cd rom to the burner direct w/o using "burn proof" or one of the other buffer underun protection firmwares, you will have to have the two drives on seperate ide busses. The usual acceptable setup is to have the burner set as master on one ide bus. Your hard drive and cd rom goes on the other ide bus as master and slave. In other words in order to do on the fly, disc to disc burning, you can't have both cd drives on the same cable. With burner speeds the way they are and with the various "burn proof" features available today, I can't think of any reason one would want to do drive to drive, on the fly burning. In one of my computers I have (purchased it a while back and figured it's better to use it then have it gather dust) a promise pci - ide card. This gives me 2 additional ide buses. So what I did, was run each drive on it's on cable as a single. I have the burner on one, the dvd rom on another, a zip drive on another and the hard drive on still another. I did this mainly because the hard drive cage is on the bottom of the case (evercase- from the evercase thread) and my flat dual cables won't reach from the hd to the dvd.
In a computer I built for a friend (also an evercase) I put the hd in the one of the upper 3 1/2" bays and a dual flat cable was able to reach from the hd to the dvd rom drive so I had these two on a dual and I ran the other ide cable up to the burner by itself.
Check the info for the round cables, I believe the 18" dual is 12" from the motherboard to the first device and 6 inches from the 1st device to the 2nd device. The 24" and 36" are farther apart in each instance.
The easiest thing to do I would guess is assuming you already have flat cables and are just replacing them, and you are satisfied with the way the system is running, just measure the flat cables and get rounded ones the same lengths.
Does that make any sense? It's late where I am, and I'm kinda groggy so if I repeated myself or missed a question, let me know....
Originally posted by: SFang
Big,
Could you provide me a link to why ON-THE-FLY copying doesn't allow burn-proof? I remembered that the first time I had two CD/CDRW drives on the same IDE channel, Nero complained that on-the-fly copying could be risky, after I move them to two different channels, it never complains again. Thanks.
Originally posted by: SFang
Big,
Could you provide me a link to why ON-THE-FLY copying doesn't allow burn-proof? I remembered that the first time I had two CD/CDRW drives on the same IDE channel, Nero complained that on-the-fly copying could be risky, after I move them to two different channels, it never complains again. Thanks.
Originally posted by: plasticquart
I don't see any way of checking whether an order has shipped from SVC. Is there? Or is a phone call my only option?
Thanks.
Originally posted by: ZakPC
Originally posted by: SFang
Big,
Could you provide me a link to why ON-THE-FLY copying doesn't allow burn-proof? I remembered that the first time I had two CD/CDRW drives on the same IDE channel, Nero complained that on-the-fly copying could be risky, after I move them to two different channels, it never complains again. Thanks.
When you copy on the fly, the data is literally being read off one CD rom and written right to the other. Burn proof kicks in when the burner "pauses" to let the buffer catch up but this can only usually be done when the buffer is filling from the hard drive. I think the on the fly can't use the burn proof becuase it can't precisely pause your CD read like it can off the hard drive. When you pause off the hard drive, it simply continues at the last byte it left off on once the buffer is full again. There may be issues when trying to re-start a read as precisely on a CD.
Originally posted by: Dran
Originally posted by: ZakPC
Originally posted by: SFang
Big,
Could you provide me a link to why ON-THE-FLY copying doesn't allow burn-proof? I remembered that the first time I had two CD/CDRW drives on the same IDE channel, Nero complained that on-the-fly copying could be risky, after I move them to two different channels, it never complains again. Thanks.
When you copy on the fly, the data is literally being read off one CD rom and written right to the other. Burn proof kicks in when the burner "pauses" to let the buffer catch up but this can only usually be done when the buffer is filling from the hard drive. I think the on the fly can't use the burn proof becuase it can't precisely pause your CD read like it can off the hard drive. When you pause off the hard drive, it simply continues at the last byte it left off on once the buffer is full again. There may be issues when trying to re-start a read as precisely on a CD.
I'd just like to clear up what seems to be some confusion about buffer under-run protection technology.
As ZakPC stated, on-the-fly copying is simply copying from one optical drive to another, not using the HDD to cache information in between.
However, this is the kind of copying in which buffer under-run protection comes in most useful, and when it's most often used. Again, as ZakPC stated, the burner "pauses" the disc in the middle of a burn if/when the buffer empties out and the copy isn't finished yet. What actually happens is that the laser stops and the firmware notes the location on the disc; when the buffer once again has enough data to continue the burn, the firmware waits for the disc to rotate back around to the correct location and re-enables the laser. This is designed to be nearly seamless. For reference, BurnProof technology is supposed to leave a gap no larger than 2 nanoseconds between stops and starts, well within the tolerance for any modern CD player or optical drive, making the track/tracks appear complete and unbroken.
The source of the copy isn't taken into consideration when buffer under-run technology kicks in, only the state of the buffer itself, so regardless of whether you're copying on the fly or from a cached image, it works, and it only uses the disc being burned for the start/stop reference points, not the HDD or CD.
For on-the-fly copying, installing the optical drives on seperate IDE channels is best, as IDE only allows traffic in one direction at a time. It's better, if you have the spare HDD space, to allow the burning program to cache an image on the HDD, as HDDs are still significantly faster than any optical drive (and, as with on-the-fly, having the burner and HDD on seperate channels is the best way to go).
As for why on-the-fly copying doesn't allow buffer under-run protection, it does, and in fact, was designed with precisely that kind of application in mind. As long as your burning program enables it, you can burn discs on the fly all day and not get a coaster unless the media's bad or the drive is wearing out or defective.
Originally posted by: RobSay
I got my order a week ago and I found out while trying to install them that my 10" floppy cable is too short. Anyone want a single round floppy cable for $4 shipped? PM me if interested.