IDE CD-Burner cabling guide.

Is there a certain way CD-Burners need to be setup on the IDE chain?

This question was answered on March 3, 2001. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.

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As technology gets better, IDE placement is becoming less critical, but with older units there are definately steps you can take to optimize the burning process.

Generally, your IDE HD has to be Primary Master and you should Slave your normal CD-Rom to it.

Older CD-Burners like to be the Master device on the Secondary IDE channel and then any other IDE device (like a ZIP drive) would be Slaved to that.

The main rule is to keep the device you are going to burn from and the CD-Burner on seperate IDE channels So if you have 2 HDs and a CD-Rom and you are going to be burning data from your 2nd HD (you have it set as the temp folder source) more than CD copies, you would setup both HDs on the Primary channel and the CD-Burner as Secondary Master with your normal CD-Rom slaved to it

As a side note, DVDs usually do not make a good source for CD copies, so if you have a HD and DVD and CD-Burner, the HD and CD-Burner would be Master on Primary and Secondary respectively and the DVD could be slaved to either device You would then copy the CD to the HD first and then burn it from there.

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Posted by Brian of Data Doctors on March 3, 2001

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