I have a new computer with a DVD drive, and a DVDr 16x burner.

From my old computer, I have a yamaha 52x cdrw that I would like to use, because the DVDR is much slower at burning CDs. Is there a cable I can buy, or something I can do to run 3 Disc drives, or do I have to give up one of them???

Thanks for the help!.

 

I never tried putting 3 drives but I would imagine you just put the 3rd CDR as a Slave and attaching it the the Primary IDE cable thats hooked up to your hard drive? Correct me if im Wrong

 

No....the cable only has 3 ends. One for the motherboard, and 2 for one master and one slave. I need to add another slave.

Anyone else with a suggestion???

 

I meant adding it to your Hard Drive slave connection

Primary IDE: MASTER Harddrive, Slave CDRW (make sure you set the jumper to slave for the CDRW and Master for the Hard Drive, Some Hard Drives dont have jumpers and is set at default)
Secondary IDE: Master DVDRom, Slave DVDR

And if you have two hard drives I believe each IDE channel supports only two peripherals, anyone correct me if im wrong Good Luck

 

Thats what I mean. A motherboard has 2 IDE plugs. Each one controlls 2 devices. I already have 2 hard drives and 2 DVD players. I need to add one more CDRW. Will an IDE controller card work??? If so, which one (I have ATA 133)

 

What about a USB interface drive? You may even be able to get an adapter for the drive you've got now.

 

Are you sure your DVD burner doesn't burn CD-R's faster than 16x? I just bought a Sony DRU-710A DVD burner (dual layer) for my PC and although it's a 16x DVD burner (even though you won't find 16x DVD's ), it burns CD-R's at 48x.

You could get an external USB2.0 or Firewire CD Drive. They range from about $45 on up. It's amazing how cheap these things have gotten.

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduct.asp?...alog=420&DEPA=1

 

an IDE controller will work. if you already have one lying around then you can just slip it into the motherboard and plug the cdrw into it. on the other hand, if you don't already have one, it'll cost you on average $40 for a IDE card. i don't know if $40 is worth it to you. if so, then go get one. just to prewarn you: this may not happen with your computer, but when i added an IDE card into mine, my windows xp bootup "lagged" noticeable. apparently, winxp has to spend the extra time to load up the driver for the IDE card and detect the drive connected to the IDE card. if a "lagged" bootup is not tollerable to you, then you probably want find another solution. lastly, given that you plan on burning at 52X, an ATA133 card would be preferred.

 

you probably might know this, so i don't want to insult your intellegence. uhm. usually they're 2 IDE links on the mother board. each component like your dvdrom/cdrw/hardrive etc has jumper settings you need to set either to: cable select, master, or slave. You'll need two ribbon cables that look something like this

[]====[]========[]


so here is the diagram as follows

IDE1(primary)[]===[]DVD-ROM(slave or cable select)====[]Harddrive(master)

IDE2(secondary)[]===[]DVD-RW(slave or cable select)====[]CD-RW(master)

this config should work if you decide to use 3 drives and typically the drives would be labled as follows

- hardrive C:
- dvd-rom D:
- CD-RW E:
- DVD-RW F:

 

he already used up his IDEs, both primaries and secondaries. he has 2 harddrives, a dvd-rom and a dvd-rw, and wants to add a cdrw.