Tutorial for connecting 2 cd roms?

[mikehende]

Got a Dell desktop that came with a cdrw and would like to add a regular cd rom so I can copy from the cd rom directly to the cdrw, how can I do the "wiring" or where can I get info on how to it please? Thanks.

[AWS]

Connect the cdrom and cdrw to the same cable. Set cdrw pins to master and cdrom to slave.

Pins are on the back of the drives next to the cable connection. Configuration diagram is on top or bottom of cdrom

[GavinO]

For best speed copying disc-to-disc, you generally want the drives on separate IDE channels. If you have 1 or 2 hard drives, I would suggest this arrangement:

 

Primary Channel:

Master: Primary (OS) HD

Slave: CD-ROM

Secondary Channel:

Master: CD-RW

Slave: Secondary HD

 

In that arrangement, fastest speeds would be from the primary disk (but the speed gain should be less than the time taken to transfer them there from a secondary disk). Note that this arrangement can be a bit messy to realize with IDE cables; most case geometries support two optical drives on a chain better than mixed drive chains.

[mikehende]

Strangest thing happened here Guys that I would appreciate an explanation for. My new Tower from Dell came with a cd burner so I took one of the regular cd roms from one of my other pcs and installed it into the new Tower but when I checked , the pc was not recognizing it so I played around for a half-hour or so changing the cable e.t.c but still nothing so I tried using another cd burner from one of my other pc's that I know was working 100% and this time it worked, I was able to see both drives now labelled D and E so apparently the first cd rom I used was defective.

I then decided to try a "Copy" just to see what would happen, lo and behold, it copied a cd perfectly, now this is WITHOUT me having to change the Jumper settings on both drives. The reason why I attempted the burn before changing the Jumper settings was because in one of my other Dell desktops when I'd looked at how the 2 cd roms were connected I noticed that BOTH the regular cd rom and the burner were set to "Cable select" so neither Master nor Slave jumper settings were used.

Now, in my Compaq Desktop, when I looked at this same setup I noticed that it was set just like the way Bob described, so what I would like to know now please is "why" both methods work? Also, is one method better than the other? Thanks.

[AWS]

Newer motherboards can detect master/slave settings by the way they are attached to the cable. Your Dell can recognize drives jumpered to cable select. Your Compaq probably doesn't recognize cable select so you have to set the jumpers. Both ways work.