Hi there!

Just a quick question, I have 2 40gig 7200rpm ata133 hdds, a cd-r and a dvd rom - NOW I dont really use the cd/dvd (like once a month) so is it faster to put a HDD on primary and secondary master and using the cds as slaves - OR putting both hdds on primary??

PERFORMANCE GAINS ARE BEST OVERALL WITH:

IDE1: C-Drive [Master] + Optical Drive [Slave]
IDE2: D-Drive [Master] + Optical Drive / CD Burner [Slave]

Whenever you 'burn' a CD set your options to 'make a temporary copy of file[s]' to a TMP directory on C-Drive. That way you run less risk of buffer underrun and making coasters.

put the harddrives on the same cable, the cd burner and dvd on the other cable there ata 33 or 66, i heard that the dvd should be master and the cd burner slave it appears to work beter while burning cds.

follow up http://www.redneck-puters.com/help/addcd.shtml CD-ROM drives should be placed as the Master device on the Secondary bus if available. If you have a CD Writer, it is recommended that you place the CD Writer as the Master device on the Secondary bus and the CD-ROM drive as the Slave device on the Primary bus.
DVD-ROM Drive DVD-ROM drives are best installed as the Master device on the Secondary bus.//

it appears i was wrong the dvd should be a slave and the cd burner a master same website in follow up///DVD-ROM drives are best installed as the Master device on the Secondary bus. Having the DVD-ROM drive as a Slave device can cause poor playback of DVD movies. *If* you have a CD Writer also connected to the IDE bus, it is best to set the CD Writer as the Master device on the Secondary bus and the DVD-ROM drive as the Slave device on the Primary bus. This may cause some some DVD titles to playback poorly but it will minimize the likelihood of errors when creating CDs on the CD Writer.///

I repeat to all you who are quoting excellent installation tips, but from sources where they are configuring for single Disk systems.

IDE1: C-Drive [Master] + Optical Drive [Slave]
IDE2: D-Drive [Master] + Optical Drive / CD Burner [Slave]

A DVD will play fine, as slave: the biggest killer for DVD movies is not if Master or Slave, but how powerful is the AGP Card!

I know this is just repeating what the previous post have said. When I was installing a internal CD-RW drive. I was told that the optimal setup was installing the burner as the secondary master ! Good Luck,Nick

Hard drives should be on the same IDE channel, i.e. Primary master and Primary slave.

Secondary master should be your CDRW and secondary slave should be your CDROM.

If you put your ATA133 drive as primary master and your CD/DVD/CDRW as primary slave, you slow that IDE channel to the speed of the slowest component attached. Your DVD peobably runs, at max, @ DMA2, so if you put it on the same IDE channel as your fast hard drive, you effectively limit your hard drive to DMA2 as well.

Putting hard drives as masters and optical drives as slaves will limit both IDE channels.

A lot of people are saying that they were told that the CDRW should be set on secondary master, which is probably the best thing in a SINGLE HARD DRIVE ENVIRONMENT, but overall system performance should be based around your hard drives, not optical drives. Hard drives run the entire time your computer is on, and emphasis should be placed there, rather than on the optical drive that is only used occasionally to burn a CD or watch a DVD. (I prefer tMoustch DVD's on my TV anyway...)