Using 2 DVD Writers

MisterAnarchy

I just bought a second DVD Writer so now I have 2 Nec3540 drives in my main PC.
I have them on 1 IDE connector and 2 Hard Drives on the other connector.
Can I burn 2 discs (Same content) at the same time at 8x or will I encounter bottlenecks ?
I have been told that I would be best to put a HDD and DVD RW on each channel, with the dvdrw's as master's as well.
This should not slow the HDD's down as they are using UDMA mode, which allows each device to control its own IO speed with minimal CPU intervention, so a UDMA6 device will run at its full speed even if a UDMA2 device is connected to the same cable.
Is this the correct info/setup ?
Cheers

kaimera

i use a dvd and seperate cd burner at the same time, no issues. cant remember if they're on the same ide channel tho..

Lump

AFAIK you need to be on seperate IDE Channels.

John

Endurance Man

I dont think u would be ableto burn 2 cd's with the same content at the same time.

Mutant_Fruit

The problem is that when you start burning a disc, the writer locks the IDE channel, so everything on the cable except for that particular writer can't send or recieve data. Thats why you should never have a burner on the same IDE channel as your OS install, and you shouldn't try burning two discs at once because it can cause errors. I've never done it, i'm just saying what i've read.

deckie27

MisterAnarchy

You need to get something Like this
Ide controller

Yor would put each device on its own channel.

You will get full speed between all devices then.
I don't think you could burn the same item to both drives at the same time.But you could say copy the iso onto the other Hdd then have 2 disks burning at the 1 time


Dec

MisterAnarchy

After alot of feedback I have been assured the following is the best setup.

IDE1 = HD-1 master, DVDRW-1 slave
IDE2= DVDRW-2 master, HD-2 slave.

This will give optimum results for ripping and burning on two drives, but will not reduce performance in other areas.
I will test this and follow up in the next few days.

deckie27

You better check your sources
I have €20 here which says that is the worst way u could set it up.
Let us know how ur tests go.


Dec

smeggle

deckie27 wrote:

You better check your sources
I have €20 here which says that is the worst way u could set it up.
Let us know how ur tests go.


Dec

i'd have to agree with you there. Configuration I would use would be;

on ide cable 1
ide1 =master
ide2 =slave

on ide cable2
dvd-rw1 = master
dvd-rw2 = slave

To do what you want your going to need at least over 3ghz cpu and a lot of ram thyats if it can be done I'm not sure.

I have done this though - burnt a dvd to disc and also another dvd to image disc at the same time though it took a fair while to complete and the image disc burn did have glitches in finished quality. I deleted it due to that and no wjust burn to image drive and from there to dvd. Process is quick enough really and quality remains high.

Would also like to se how you get on and a write up on the how to if successful.

Mutant_Fruit

MisterAnarchy wrote:

After alot of feedback I have been assured the following is the best setup.

IDE1 = HD-1 master, DVDRW-1 slave
IDE2= DVDRW-2 master, HD-2 slave.

This will give optimum results for ripping and burning on two drives, but will not reduce performance in other areas.
I will test this and follow up in the next few days.

.

The problem is that when you start burning a disc, the writer locks the IDE channel, so everything on the cable except for that particular writer can't send or recieve data. Thats why you should never have a burner on the same IDE channel as your OS install, and you shouldn't try burning two discs at once because it can cause errors if one drive locks the channel at the wrong time. I've never done it, i'm just saying what i've read.

I'm fairly sure thats the worst possible setup you could have chosen. Not only do you give a good chance of lockups (supposedly) but you also have slowed down both your HD's from UDMA100/133 right down to UDMA33. So you'll be experiencing slower than usual data copying speeds.

Blub2k4

The advice with the third IDE controller on a pci slot is the way to go, anything else is a bad config, some dvd drives wont even work correctly as slave so it is ill-advised to put them on there. Get an IDE card and add a new bus.