Two weeks ago I purchased a LG GSA-4040B DVD writer (-R/-RW/+R/+RW/RAM) but I'm not sure if I've correctly installed it for optimal performance I read on other threads that I should: "set as Master on the secondary IDE channel" I've not really got much clue on how to do this ... I pretty much guessed which ribbon to put where on my motherboard. The little switch on the writer was already set to 'master' .. but do I need set something on the hard drive, or the motherboard to master (couldn't find another switch) I believe on my motherboard there were two places to plug the ribbon in - xxx1 and xxx2 (can't remember what the xxx's said -- IDE1 and IDE2 maybe?) I have one ribbon running from the GSA4040B drive to my hard drive to my motherboard. Another ribbon runs from my CD-ROM drive (a "SONY CD=ROM CDU5221" according to Control Panel > System) to my hard drive and then to motherboard. One side-effect of installing the writer is that I can no longer see my second hard drive when I click on 'My Computer'. This isn't the end of the world right now (as it only contains backups of stuff) but I'd like to have both hard drives viewable (both 60gb 7,200rpm drives) Also before I just had 'C' (bootable) and 'D' (spare hard drive) and then 'E' (old writer) and 'F' (old CD-ROM) .. (or possibly E and F the other way round)... but now I get 'C' (as my main bootable drive), 'D' (dunno what this is?), "Removable Drive 'E'", 'F' (the GSA4040B) and 'H' Currently, the DVD writer seems to work ok, haven;t tested it that strenously yet -- but I'm wondering if it's all set up properly? I am using: (got this info from 'NeroInfoTool') Windows 98SE AMD Athlon 1200+ BIOS: AMI 07.00T Motherboard: ECS K7S5A System: ECS K7S5A CPU: 1200Mhz Bus Speed: 66Mhz Memory: 512Mb I have installed Nero Burning ROM 6.3.0.2 I'm not sure whether or not DMA is enabled? What does this mean? Thanks for reading, any help would be appreciated!
HAHAHA, there's your first mistake! If you still can, return it and get a Pioneer A06/106 (I wish i did, 2 late now...) Read the simple directions in the manual? and do flash at A302, lets more 4x capabilities (Five types of 4x media down, a few hundred to go!) .
hi there, yes I did read the manual but it didn't exactly contain extensive instructions As well as the 4040B, I have 2 hard drives and a CD-Rom and floppy drives, so wasn't sure where the various leads were meant to go What are the benefits of flashing from A301 to A302 (bought my writer on 20-Dec-03, delivered on 30-Dec-2003)
You'll want to move things around a bit. 1.Make sure your C drive is jumpered as master. 2.Jumper your spare harddrive as slave. 3.Connect your C drive to one end of the ide cable. connect the middle to the slave drive. Note on most cables one end is useually blue,if so connect that end to IDE1 on your motherboard. 4.Connect 1 end to the dvd writer jumpered as master 5.Connect the middle to the cd-rom jumpered as slave. 6.Connect the blue end to IDE2 on the motherboard. Thats the basic layout. Anyhow this way is stable but not neccesarily the "best" since both your rom drives are on the same ide direct transfers like copying audio cd's are a bit slower unless you create an image on your hd first,but you'll avoid the dreaded buffer-underrun that way and copying the data off your harddrives to your dvd writer will be quicker since they are on seperate ide channels.The other way would be to mount your boot drive as master like above and jumper you cd-rom as it's slave in ide1. Then dvd-writer, master back-up hd as slave on ide 2. Faster rips on cd to dvd but slower from your slave hd to your dvd writer. You also risk having your hdd's operate in pio mode if either of the opticals were run in pio mode. Personally i'd set things up the first way. After you installed and rebooted, windows will have reconfigured your drives again. If set-up like I first described they'll most likely be C:your boot drive D: your dvd writer E: your cd rom F: your second hd. You can remap them to your original set-up by right-clicking on each drive and choosing the old drive letter from the pull down box. You'll probably have to do it in stages since windows won't let you choose a drive letter thats already in use.Like renaming your rom's to x and z reboot,then rename your hd's to the letters they were before. As for checking to see what mode your drives are in you can either go into the device manager and right click on each ide controller select properties and check each ide channel.You can download aida32 a free program that will give you all kinds of information about your computer, although I'm not sure if it reports the dma mode of optical drives. Whew,Sorry for such a long post, just trying to be thorough and not be confusing.
hey thanks so much for your time DarkFoss, I'll give your set-up a go over the weekend.. really appreciate your reponse Also, (with my current setup) Nero wont let me burn any slower on CD mode than x4 ... I wish to burn my CD's at x1 but it wont let me select any lower than x4 on the drop down menu on Nero? any ideas how to force x1?
^ can anybody tell me how I can get my CD writer 4040B to burn at x1 speed (rather than x4, which currently shows up as the slowest available?) -- tried using Nero, DVD Decypter and Alcohol120%
hi! haven't encountered that problem yet so i've checked on the specs of your dvd writer: CD-RW: 16x, 12x, 8x, 4x CD-R: 24x, 16x, 8x, 4x DVD+RW: 2.4x DVD+R: 4x, 2.4x DVD-RW: 2x, 1x DVD-R: 4x, 2x DVD-RAM: 3x, 2x maybe you should check on your manual too if it is possible to use 1x in a specific media. or maybe the media you are using is not designed for 1x, you should try to look on that possibility. hope this will help...
hey, i have a pioneer dvr-106 coming tommorow and i need some help installing it. i bought it as just the drive, no box, no instructions. i have one hard drive, 1 cd rom and a cd burner. i would imagine the 2 cd drives are on the same ide cable. can anyone tell me what the new jumper settings should be??? and will my computer recognize it as a dvd burner or do i have to download some drivers??? i have a xp home 1.6 pentium 4, 768 mb ram
hey, if you are not planning to remove the cd burner. just set your dvd burner to slave jumper and attach it to the primary ide cable. but if you are planning to remove the cd burner, check 1st the jumper setting of cd burner or whichever drive that you will remove except ofcourse your hdd. the jumper setting of the dvd burner should be the same of the one you will remove. the idea of jumper setting is there should only be one master & one slave in both primary and secondary ide's. hope this will help
i just checked to see what they were, and they are both set at cable select. should i just set both my older drive and my new burner to cable select????? thanks for ur help
if your primary master(hdd)was already set to cable select you should set the jumper of the dvd burner to cable select too. but if it was set to primary master then you'll have to set the jumper of the dvd burner to primary slave. good luck!
Hey thwdrwll, If your still having problems selecting a lower write speed you might want to give Nero's Dynamic write speed off tool a shot. You can find it at nero's site click on support/utility's/support tool's. I haven't had to use it but it may help you out.
you should update to A302, it fixed most generic DVD media so it can burn at 4x read up on the news group about it
