Running a DVDROM and a Hard Disk....

W

Waffle

Alpha Geek
...for some reason, still unknown, my CDRom/DVDRom Combi Drive's CD part don't work too good. Ie, not at all.

Then whilst reading about bottlenecks, something clicked.

I have the Combi Drive on the same IDE (0 in this case) as my hard disk. Could that be what is slowing it down, particularly when playing and saving music, as both the drive + disk is in use at the same time?

What do you think?

Thanks.
 
Having other devices on the same IDE chain as your HDD can definately hinder your performance quite substantially. Ideally each device should have its own channel. If you don't have enough IDE channels for each device to be isolated, you might consider buying a good Promise IDE controller (about $30 US).
Some other factors which come into play include jumper configuration (are they set right?), and device placement on your IDE chain. Typically, the drive capable of the fastest data transfer and the highest DMA type should be the master, which should be placed at the end of the IDE chain. Finally, the thing that usually kills system performance and hinders your ability to burn the most is DMA. You must must have DMA turned on in order for your system to function properly.
 
My jumpers I think are right. In the manual it mentions a turbo mode, but when i tried this,it failed to boot up. Switching back to normal, no problems.

I'll look in to a controller.

thanks.
 
i always put hard drives on one ide and any other devices (cdroms/dvd's e.t.c) on an other, you should have atleast 2 IDE slots (not including floppy)
 
unless i'm mistaken, I think I have a hard disk, a floppy and 2 cd roms coming off of one ide. this seems a lot on one channel though. how do i check?
 
Impossible. IDE is limited to 2 devices per channel. If it were SCSI, I could believe that (although I don't think there's a SCSI floppy drive). Easiest way to see what's what is to just open the case up and look.

Ports you have: 2 IDE, 1 Floppy, 2 SATA ports from the ICH5 (the southbridge of your chipset pairing). Asus has also added a Promise controller that adds an extra IDE port and 2 more SATA ones.

This is assuming your talking about the Asus P4C800-E Deluxe in your system profile.
 
I had a similar problem. The DVDrw and cdrw would not work together so I disconnected the cdrw drive.
 
First of all you said that the CD doesn't work,.. meaning to say that the DVD rom work fine. Correct??(it is a combo drive)
Moreover, Anti, there are SCSI floppy drives,.. i had one but junked it as I didn't need it.
 
Somebody once told me that the DVD-CD combo drives have two lasers in it. One for the DVD and one for the CD. My DVD-CD rom also broke down about 6 months ago,.. but it was quite opposite to your problem. My DVD wasn't working but the CD was wroking. Maybe one of your laser/lense are dead.
here is the link to a thread,.. read it.
http://www.hardwareforums.com/showthread.php?t=1647
 
Mack said:
First of all you said that the CD doesn't work,.. meaning to say that the DVD rom work fine. Correct??(it is a combo drive)
Moreover, Anti, there are SCSI floppy drives,.. i had one but junked it as I didn't need it.
Click to expand...
Maybe every 1 in 100 PCs has a SCSI interface in this day and age... maybe 1 in 100. Even the servers I build use SATA rather than SCSI due to cost vs performance issues. But, even if he did have a SCSI setup, a wrong jumper config could definately be a potential issue. Perhaps even more so than EIDE, which tends to be more forgiving.
 
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