I will have (shortly, once I can afford the DVD+-RW drive) the following setup:

Mobo: Gigabyte GA-7VRXP with onboard Promise RAID controller
Athlon XP+ 1900
Windows XP Pro
512 Mb DDR RAM

HD: WD-1200JB 120Gb EIDE 7200rpm 8Mb cache (primary, 0, UDMA 5)
Lite-On LTR-52246S CD-RW (secondary, 0, UDMA 2)
Lite-On LTD-163D DVD ROM (secondary, 1, UDMA 2)
DVD+-RW (whichever 4X I can get for less than $200)

What is the best IDE configuration for these drives? I've read the odd throw-away phrase about optical drives being best as masters on the channel, but never a decent explanation of why.

The Promise RAID controller gives me the opportunity to have two extra IDE channels (3+4) but I have had odd results whenever I tried using them (drives not recognised, failing to write, that kind of thing). Does having each device as master on it's own channel make any sense?

Any advice from those experienced in this area will be much appreciated. On-the-fly copying from the 163D would be nice but not essential. Also, should I be avoiding drives that are restricted to PIO mode?

TIA

Promise onboard RAID and add-in HD cardds are not reccomemded for use with drives. (there is another brand that is, but i forgot the name) Personnaly given that config id put the HD and the DVD-rom on the Primary channel and make sure the DVD drive is not holding back the speed of the HD. Then Id put the burner as a master on the secondary.

Go with a PCI controller for the HD's, you will likely see improved performance as long as you don't have the PCI bus crammed full of stuff. As to the IDE config, it makes little or no difference - except if you wish to access multiple optical drives at the same time from different applications...in which case you will want them on separate channels.
Having an optical drive on the same channel will not slow the HD unless you access the optical drive while the HD is working. If you do that, the HD will pause for a couple seconds.
If you put the 2 burners on separate channels, you should be able to burn to each one from a different process at the same time, which is what I do.
BTW, have you checked your PSU lately, is it going to run all this stuff for you?

Is it hot enough for you this week in NM?

It's quite warm here but it's a dry heat

My PSU is getting replaced next week (Thermaltake 420W) for just this eventuality.

I don't need to write CDs and DVDs at the same time, my PC might be able to multitask like that but I'm not! Sounds like the onboard Promise chip was a waste of time, the PCI slots are pretty full so I'll try just the main channels first and see how that goes.

If I'm ripping videos from DVD am I right in thinking that (due to size, decoding, dumping unwanted extras, etc.) I'll be writing the files FROM the DVD-ROM to the HD, then from there to the DVD-RW? In which case I'll want the two opticals on the 2nd channel for best performance? (sorry, probably belongs in noob questions).

Thanks for the advice.

Sorry, i completely missed the onboard controller. By all means, use it!

That's as good an idea as any.

Have you read: "Zen and the art of swamp cooler maintenance"?

I would use the onboard promise controller for the HD only(enable ATA in the bios, since RAID isn't usefull with one HD ).
The DVD-ROM could be on the primary IDE (master) and both the DVD-R (master) and CDRW (slave) on the second.
(no specific reason to have the "source" drive on primary and the "targets" on the secondary though; the other way around should work just as good)

Well, the new DVD RW is installed (Buslink - NEC 1300A), here's the setup:

HD on Primary master
CDRW on Secondary master
DVDRW on Promise 1 master
DVDROM on Promise 1 slave

All works well, the drives are all recognised as UDMA. The inside of my case looks like a spaghetti explosion now.

There was a glitch on POST the first time, but it's gone away (BIOS needed to update its auto-recognition is my guess). As the drives on the Promise chip are seen as SCSI I'm not sure if flashing the F/W will present challenges.

PSU updated to a Thermaltake 420W too. Very nice, highly recommended.

it's recommended to keep optical drives on the board's main controllers if possible. otherwise, problems could possibly arise, like not being able to flash the drives' firmware, as well as a few others i can't really recall. however, if u're not having any problems and don't need to flash the firmware, everything should be fine.

Well, I tried having the CD-RW on the same channel as the HD, and for some reason the HD slowed to a crawl, even when the CD-RW wasn't in use. I had been able to get on with other stuff while ripping dvds, but in that config the PC was practically locked, even browsing the web caused the buffers to under-run and a temporary lock-up. I moved the CD-RW off onto the Promise channels and the problem went away. Hmmm, now I'm confused