fitting a DVD writer to my PC need help please

happyhero

Hi I have bought this drive http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/126226.

I have fitted several drives and even built a PC in the past but need some advice. I am a little rusty so forgive anything I get wrong and please correct me.

In my PC it has two IDE connections on the motherboard both used, IDE1 has my HD on it and a DVD ROM on it as slave. The cable is the fine ribbon kind, I believe it is an 80 way ribbon as oposed to a 40. IDE2 has a CD writer on it set as master and the cable is bigger gauge ie I think that one is 40 way.

Now I have replaced the DVD ROM with the new DVD writer mentioned at the top of my post and set it as slave, but someone mentioned to me in a previous posting that you should not mix optical drives with harddrives on the same cable but it has always been that the DVD ROM was on the same 80 way cable as the HD and it seemed to work fine.

I have just tried the new DVD writer with a bought music CD and it works fine.

So now the questions.

If one IDE can take an 80 way cable would it probably follow that both could?

What would be the benefit if I changed the 40 way one for an 80 way one?

Would the CD writer that has been in this PC since 2002 when I bought the PC be ok with an 80 way cable?

If I should not mix optical with harddrives how come it all seems to be working and why should I not mix them? Surely the old DVD ROM being a disk reader would have been an optical drive.

Would there be a reason to put both CD writer and DVD writer on the same cable and should it be a 40 way or 80 way for best results?

Probably got more questions when I get some answers to these, sorry.

Any help appreciated.

BritBrat

If one IDE can take an 80 way cable would it probably follow that both could?

I am not to up on what the differences are with 80 and 40 wire but I do know if you use 80 wire you can set the jumpers on the drives to "cable select" and then you do not need to set master/slave as the system will do it for you

What would be the benefit if I changed the 40 way one for an 80 way one?

See above

Would the CD writer that has been in this PC since 2002 when I bought the PC be ok with an 80 way cable?

I would think so but if you have a 40 cable and a spare IDE on mother board and bay why not use the drive

If I should not mix optical with harddrives how come it all seems to be working and why should I not mix them? Surely the old DVD ROM being a disk reader would have been an optical drive.

The only reason I can see is it may be a little faster as they are not on the same IDE connector/cable.

Would there be a reason to put both CD writer and DVD writer on the same cable and should it be a 40 way or 80 way for best results?

I would just put the other drive on IDE2 as I said above, reason for doing this is you can then copy one drive to another without having to make a temp file (on the fly). Also use the old drive for generale use saving the burner for burning then it may last longer.

bingo_bango

You need to visit here, and read through it all.

Also, why put the CD Writer back in? Would it not make more sense to have the DVD- Writer, and the DVD ROM installed? That way you could 'backup' your discs.

happyhero

bingo_bango wrote: »

You need to visit here, and read through it all.

Also, why put the CD Writer back in? Would it not make more sense to have the DVD- Writer, and the DVD ROM installed? That way you could 'backup' your discs.

Ok thanks bingo bango, link was great learnt a lot but also found it will come down to some choices, so I will have to give it some thought.

As for backing up, I need some advice, my 7 year old daughter has a portable dvd player and she aint gentle with the disks no matter how much I moan and groan. Now I know you are not supposed to do this and I dont think I will do much backing up from disk to disk apart from perhaps this, if possible, ie Could I backup films we bought her so that she could be rough with the copies and we keep the originals for watching in the lounge sort of as the family looked after collection?

If this is possible I suppose I would then want the drives on seperate cables as they are now?

In deciding my configuration, the main thing I would probably want to do is edit my movies from my camcorder and keep the edited version on DVD, the backing up would just be a handy bonus. Also backing up the originals, would it be an easy thing or would it require some fancy software. I know I am boardering on copyrights but I am not after doing anything dodgy just keeping my own bought originals backed up if possible for our own use. It would certainly be useful as she has perminently damaged some in the past, I keep trying and she has got better at handling them.

bat999

Hi
Some info about backing up DVDs.

If it's copyrighted material then we don't discuss it on this forum (or the thread gets pulled).
But we assume that you're interested in backing up non-copyrighted discs.

Some movies are recorded on Dual-layer discs which hold up to 9GB of data.
When you're backing up you probably will want to use normal 4.7GB discs (because they cost less than D-L ones).
So they use two methods to help you do this.
1) Select only the main movie to back up, don't bother with the 'extras'.
2) Re-encode the movie at slightly less quality.

The software that they use to do this is called 'DVD shrink'.

For those people who do back up copyrighted discs there is software called 'DVDFab decrypter' that cuts through the protection.

These two are free downloads. There are probably other packages too.
Let Google be your friend.

happyhero

Thanks very much bat999, do you have any idea or advice on the best connection method for my drives, ie maybe they way you connected yours?

Also if I do put both optical drives on the same cable it mentions in the link that bingo bango sent me that only one drive is accessed at any one time on a single cable so would making a backup be a problem or would the software sort this out somehow, I don't want to end up with too many coasters.

And what comination of the drives should I keep ie I now have a DVD ROM, a DVD writer amd a CD writer but only two physical slots on the front. And I can not see me wanting any more than two. Bingo bango suggested ditching the CD writer and keeping the two DVD ones, would you agree or not and why?

bat999

Hi
I have two hard drives on one cable. On the other cable I have the CD-rom which came fitted with the PC and a DVD-writer that I added later.

I have heard it said that you shouldn't mix magnetic and optical drives on the same cable. But I don't know whether there is any truth in it or not. I don't know. But your system has been running successfully with them mixed so far.
If it were me, I would put the two optical drives on one cable and the HDD on the other and think about adding another HDD later. But that's just my personal preference, not based on any technical knowledge.

As for which drive to get rid of.
If you keep the DVD-rom then you might be able to copy straight from one DVD disc to another. I have never done this because I haven't got a separate DVD-rom. I have to rip/shrink to HDD then insert a blank disc then burn it.
But you may prefer to keep the CD writer instead, so that you have an alternative writer.
Whichever you decide, you don't need to chuck the other one out. You could change them over if you think that you made a bad choice.