Optical Drive Configuration and Performance

Question

Hi. I have a question about installing both a DVD Burner and a CD Burner in one computer (a 4600). I have an NEC 2500 DVD Burner and a Sony 48x CD Burner (came with dell computer). The problem I am having is the performance of a drive that is connected to the cable as "slave." I have both drives set to Cable Select. I have tried two configurations and here are the results:

DVD Burner as "master" and CD Burner as "slave:"

The DVD Burner performs at its expected performance. CDs are burned fine and there are no buffer problems. The process is done in about 3 minutes. The CD Burner however slows to a haul and has buffer problems. Using Nero, the buffer level of the drive fluctates from 5% to 97%, going down then up constantly, stretching the actual burn process to the 8 to 9 minute range.

CD Burner as "master" and DVD Burner as "slave:"

The CD Burner burns at 48x just fine, with no buffer problems. The DVD burner however experiences buffer problems. The drive buffer level fluctuates from 5% to 97%, again, stretching the burn process to the 8 to 9 minute range.

The CDs that were burned in the "slave" drives can be read fine without problems in other optical drives I've tested them in. They just take way too long to be burned.

So my question is this: is having two burners on the same IDE channel not recommended? Should I just choose one drive and stick with that one? I would figure that it does not matter which drive is connected to which end as long as they are not used at the same time. But in my case, whatever drive is connected to the "slave" connecter performs way below standards.

Is there a fix to this? Or maybe I should just stick with one drive and put in a cd-rom on as a "slave?"

Thanks for any replies.

Predator · Answer

Hi Trancelucent,In theory you should not see this, in a nutshell, the ATA interface sends the signal down the line, the Slave drive must wait for the Master to address the signal, we are talking nano seconds here, so that is why I said you should not see it. However in the 'real' world we do see issues at times. Standard steps, try a new IDE cable, there may be an issue with the middle connection, verify that both Drive 0 & Drive 1 on the Secondary are indeed enable and that you have DMA enabled for the drives.Is there any chance in a blue moon you ordered the system with a Serial Hard drive? If so, then you can correct this very easily bye moving one drive to the empty Primary Channel on the motherboard. I am very surprised Dell does not push the Serial Hard drive.Best Regards God, grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked anyway, the good fortune to run into the ones I do and the eyesight to tell thedifference. CD/RW Link

trancelucent · Answer

Hi Predator. Thanks for the reply. I have looked over your site along with random google searches. The problem I was having is that the slave optical drive did not have DMA turned on. I used Nero's InfoTool to verify this. So after finding that out, I tried to find out ways to turned DMA on for the slave optical drive. I tried uninstalling the secondary IDE channel and rebooting, but that method didn not work. The next solution was found on a forum that I came across during my googling. The soultion was to set the secondary IDE slave channel to Auto-detect in the BIOS. Once I did that, I checked the properties of the Secondary IDE channel and now both drives have a transfer mode of Ultra DMA 2. This fixes the problem and I should be able to burn CDs and DVDs at maximum performance. Thanks again.

Predator · Answer

Hi Trancelucent,Glad to hear you solved your issue and I appreciate the feedback, hopefully this will help someone in the future. Best of luck with your system God, grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked anyway, the good fortune to run into the ones I do and the eyesight to tell thedifference. CD/RW Link

ihadalife · Answer

Well I am amazed.

At last a fix for this problem, it seems that Dell in their wisdom have decided to set the Secondary IDE Slave in System Settings to OFF as Default?

This applies I THINK only to the newer Dells, ( I could be wrong ) I have had a new 8300 since March, and have never got UDMA Mode 2 on both my writers, ( only the Master drive gets it not the Slave ) I have posted on this Forum, Google searched,and tried all the fixes other than registry fixes, also contacted Dell to no avail.

Surely Dell must know of this problem?

Anyway mine now seems to be cured ( I hope)

trancelucent · Answer

I'm glad my post was able to help someone else. I think you are right when it applies to the newer computers. I bought another 4600 not too long ago and it had burning issues. Once in a while I would get coasters. I didn't think much about until I tried to install my DVD burner and had burn issues. I found out that the problem was the DMA setting being off. So I checked the other 4600 and behold, even with only one optical drive, the transfer mode was set to PIO. Now why would dell not turn on DMA when there is only one drive? It puzzles even me.

I have since fixed that problem and burns on the other 4600 are now fine. Pretty funny how little things like these are not looked at when the machine is built.

ihadalife · Answer

It certainly gave me confidence after reading your post, as I was not to happy about playing with the Bios, but as I have ordered a second Hard Drive and was looking on how to do this on other Forums and it seems that you have to do the very same thing in the Primary Slave IDE and turn from OFF to AUTO to get full UDMA Mode!

So has I had to go into Bios anyway I thought What The Hell and changed the Writer as well to AUTO.

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Optical Drive Configuration and Performance

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