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View Full Version : HELP PLZ.. 2 drives in same computer =slow transfer speeds

hevnbnd
02-15-2007, 01:40 PM
I have a problem that is driving me crazy! I have a Intel D915PBL (http://www.intel.com/cd/channel/reseller/asmo-na/eng/products/desktop/bdb/d915pbl/feature/index.htm) Motherboard and am trying to run two dvd drives. One is a writer and the other is just a plain dvd drive. When both drives are in the system I am only able to transfer books from DVD to the computer at around 5 to 10x. However if I have only one drive in the system either one transfers around 16x. I need to transfer using both at the same time. I have tried the following:

Two Different drives on the same ide cable
Two DVDRW Drives on the same cable
One IDE DVDRW Drive & One SATA DVD Rom Drive


It does not seem to matter what I do. With two drives in the system it will only transfer the data at around 5x. I have a friend that has a slower computer and no problems doing this. My motherboard only has 1 ide port. Any input would be greatly appreciated!

System Specs are as follows:
Western Digital 250GB SATA 3.0Gb/s 7200rpm, 16mb cache Hard Drive
Intel Pentium 4 3.4GHz 550 LGA775 1mb Cache 800MHz
G.SKILL 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM Unbuffered DDR2 533 (PC2 4200)
unhappy_mage
02-15-2007, 02:58 PM
Check in Device Manager the properties for your IDE controller. Make sure all devices are using DMA.

You may want to add a PCI IDE card to give you more channels. That might resolve the issue.
iroc409
02-15-2007, 03:50 PM
if you need to use them both at the same time, you need to install an add-in card as u_m suggested. IDE only does one thing one direction at a time on a channel; if you're trying to send data to the hard drives from both discs at once they have to take turns spitting out data.
hevnbnd
02-15-2007, 03:59 PM
So had this motherboard had two ide controllers and I ran one drive on each controller you are saying there would not be a problem?
unhappy_mage
02-15-2007, 06:58 PM
Most likely. But check DMA settings first - it's a cheaper fix if it works.
hevnbnd
02-15-2007, 07:52 PM
Most likely. But check DMA settings first - it's a cheaper fix if it works.
The one drive on the ide controller is set to dma, The second drive is on the sata controller so is that not like two separate ide controllers? Why should it still run slow with one on sata and one on ide?
unhappy_mage
02-15-2007, 07:59 PM
Sorry, I misread. Having one drive on IDE and one on sata is indeed two separate controllers and DMA shouldn't be an issue. I thought you were talking about hard drives in addition to the optical drives.

What program are you using to test speeds? Do both drives run fast when they're the only one in the system?
hevnbnd
02-16-2007, 12:27 AM
Sorry, I misread. Having one drive on IDE and one on sata is indeed two separate controllers and DMA shouldn't be an issue. I thought you were talking about hard drives in addition to the optical drives.

What program are you using to test speeds? Do both drives run fast when they're the only one in the system?

The books are being transfered over via itunes. It tells how fast the transfer is going. Both drives run at 16x when in the system by itself. I have tried 4 different brand ide drives when I was trying to run two ide drives on the same cable and all ran at 16x by themselves..