Another Computer Illiterate Question [cd/dvd burners]

[pmcd9]

I am replacing both of the disc drives on my pc.  Formerly I had a cd-rom and a cd burner.  I am replacing with a cd burner/dvd rom and a dvd burner.  I am reading the literature on the dvd burner and it's talking about do I want the drive to be the master or a slave.  How do I know what I want here?  Do I have to match make that match what is currently installed?  If so, how do I determine what my current config. is.  If I want to change it how do I go about it?  What happened to plug and play dammit?

[Nabubrush]

I don't know that much about computers, but don't they hang out in the billiard room?

[jough]

Well, your IDE controllers will usually support 4 drives (mix and match HDs and CDs):

Primary Master
Secondary Master

Primary Slave
Secondary Slave

You'll need to decide which drive is which - your C: drive pretty much has to be the primary master.  I usually make CD drives slaves all the time - and that's the only jumpering you'll need to do - just make sure the jumper pins are set to make the CD drive a slave and the new HD a master.

You'll usually get two drive connectors on a single ribbon cable - so plug one into IDE 1 (it may say primary) and connect your main HD and a CD drive.

Plug another HD into the primary slave.  Whatever you'd like in the secondary slave.

[CortJstr]

I'm going to assume you mainly burn stuff off of your hard drive as opposed to copying entire discs at once for this:

IDE cable 1
Master: HD
Slave: none

IDE cable 2
Master: CD-R/DVD-ROM
Slave: DVD-R

-or if you have 2 internal HDs-

IDE cable 1
Master: boot HD (the one with Windows on it)
Slave: CD-R/DVD-ROM

IDE cable 2
Master: HD 2
Slave: DVD-R

Basically burning files between 2 devices both on the same cable increases your chances of making a coaster as does having the burner as a slave.* In my examples I figured you'd be using the CD-R more often, but if you think you'll use the DVD-R more you should swap them in the above. Also in the 2 HD version I assumed not only will the CD-R be used more but that your media files are on HD2.

If this doesn't make sense you can post more about your actual situation and between Jough, slink, and I we should be able to figure something out.


*although faster/better drives and things like BurnProof make this exponentially less common than it used to be.

[slink]

Also, regarding writing between two devices on the same IDE cable, I actually came across a problem causing windows to not see either of my drives, when I had my CDwriter and DVDRom on the one chain, one hard drive on the other.
Basically you may have to split them up, and then advisable is the put the DVDrom on the same chain as you primary master (boot drive). But you can try it out and see if you come across this problem.

(With mine, it wasn't reading any disc I put in, and this is a brand new motherboard, and I shipped all but on hard drive over to SATA to try and avoid IDE problems!)

[Choop]

Whoa, whoa, whoa! We have categorization for a reason, people! You tryin' to overwhelm me with this extra craziness? I already have a whopping one active thread(s)!

Hm. I'm not moving this. Take that, Cort!

[CortJstr]

Also, regarding writing between two devices on the same IDE cable, I actually came across a problem causing windows to not see either of my drives, when I had my CDwriter and DVDRom on the one chain, one hard drive on the other.
Basically you may have to split them up, and then advisable is the put the DVDrom on the same chain as you primary master (boot drive). But you can try it out and see if you come across this problem.

(With mine, it wasn't reading any disc I put in, and this is a brand new motherboard, and I shipped all but on hard drive over to SATA to try and avoid IDE problems!)

Huh. I was forced to put both my drives on one cable thanks to length and case geometry and I've never had problems like this. I very rarely do whole disc copies so it's not an issue for me (CD-R & DVD-ROM).

Whoa, whoa, whoa! We have categorization for a reason, people! You tryin' to overwhelm me with this extra craziness? I already have a whopping one active thread(s)!

Hm. I'm not moving this. Take that, Cort!

Wonder Mod Powers Activate! *spark, fizzle*

No! I am powerless here! Damn you Choop! Daaaaamnn youuuuuu!

[slink]

I very rarely do whole disc copies so it's not an issue for me (CD-R & DVD-ROM).

That's the weird thing, I wasn't even able to copy. It just wasn't reading discs. For a while I thought my writer was dead, but when the DVDRom went down as well when I changed em round...
I think it may be an Nforce problem more than anything else. But I haven't bothered to change the back round since updating to 3.13.