Cd writers

The_Bullman

what is the differences, advantages of, IDE cd-writers and scsi cd-writer. is the later worth the money

chernobyl

Theres no real difference now with "Burn Proof" or the new "Safe Burn".
SCSI was better without these technologies as it has better transfer rates but with UDMA-100 the margin is getting smaller.

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Britany Spears Looking incredible

Gerry

erm, a cd writer does not even strain an ata/33 ide interface. The major thing scsi had going for it was lower cpu utilization, but if you manage to get dma mode enabled on an ide writer, it reduces cpu usage to almost nothing. So theres no real difference right now except on price.

Kegser

Just to add to Gerrys comments;

The only reason as I see it you'd get a SCSI writer would be to try and eliminate underruns and other associated errors when copying CDs.

Bear in mind also that the length of time a CD takes to burn is not based on how much information is being pumped into it. The Writer is limited by it's Write/ReWrite speed; e.g. 8X etc.

No matter what Writer you get, be sure to purchase one with a decent buffer. The better the buffer on the drive, the rarer errors will be. "Better" in this case usually meaning larger.

And please, if you buy an IDE Writer and put it on your Secondary IDE channel; please don't come asking why you're getting errors copying CDs at 12X


[This message has been edited by Kegser (edited 04-06-2001).]

RiCo

Stick to IDE it/they cost less and has/have no ill effects. With ATA 100 Mhz. (on newer motherboards) u can compete with SCSI in fact its faster. Standard SCSI (40Mhz) and SCSI II (80mhz) have been superseded but the SCSI card cost a packet.

I'm using a 16 Speed Yamaha at full speed on 66Mhz IDE bus with no problems. I gained nothing by putting it on the ATA100 bus.

Remember.. never put both CD's on the same IDE cable and make sure u have at least a 50 speed standard CD for fast CD to CD copies.

Gerry

As I stated above, a writer will not strain an ata/33 interface. Cd drives in general only started using even udma/33 recently. Lets say you had a 40 speed writer, if such a thing existed. This would be writing roughly 6 megs a second, a little over a fifth of an ata/33 channel's capacity.

The main thing, and this goes for ata/33/66/100, is that you enable dma . I can't overstate how important this is. It reduces cpu usage to an absolute minimum, usually a few percent, and lets you multitask while burning cd's. This usually is not enabled by default. On intel based boards it is usually in the properties for the drive. In win2k, and on via based boards, it is in the properties for whatever ide controller the writer is using.

HOWEVER, enabling dma may cause problems. Some writers do not like it, and via's ide controllers and drivers are still so buggy that it does not work properly all the time. In this case, after trying everything, scsi might be better.

The only way a decent ide writer, using dma, will give an underrun is if its a crap cd, or the hard drive is not able to supply enough data to the writer because of hard drive/cpu utilization being too high. Even this can be avoided with a burn proof writer.

As for the cables, I reckon the best solution on a board with 2 ide channels is to slave the writer on the hard drive cable. This might seem to slow things down, but the interface is not really being maxed out. The other alternative, as mentioned by rico is to put the dvd/cd and writer on the same cable, which is bad news, even when you are not doing copies.

WhiteWashMan

unless you are going into big time manufacturing of software, i dont think theres probably much difference. scsi is a bit faster unless you have a high end system etc. but for plain old copying, im sure 10 minutes wont make a difference. will it?

WhiteWashMan

besides, ide is easier to set up
unles you have no ide spaces left and just happen to have a scsi card etc...
well, really i guess it depends on your setup doesnt it.
im rambling amnt i?
i'll get me coat...