Hi all ,can anyone tell me the optimum IDE config for my drives plz,nec 2500 ,lite-on 812s ,western digital 120 hdd.any help greatly appreciated ,thnx guys

A drive in one Ribbon...the other dirve in the second ribbon. The Hard Drive in a PCI controller. Can't beat that.

After that.....latest drivers for the IDE and PCI controlers.

It depends what you want to do with your drives.
If you want to burn simeltaneously with both DVD drives, it's best to keep them on seperate IDE channels.
If you want to do on the fly burning, it's sometimes best to keep the 2 optical drives on the same IDE channel.
You'll have to experiment and move them around to find out which configuration works best on your specific mobo and IDE channels.
Just remember to always set the jumper configuration manually (don't use cable select).

thnx wes , i want to do on the fly dvd burning mostly ,does it matter which way round i configure the drives on one channel ,i.e. which is master and slave ,the lite-on i use for reading ,nec to write ,and which ide channel do i use for this config,1 or 2 for hdd

Wessociety,
You caught my attention. Would your recommendation of always setting the jumper configuration manually on your optical drives, hold true on a Dell system that favors Cable select?

@monoyam, it really shouldn't matter since the NEC seems to work fine even as a slave.

@dishinit, the Dell systems usually work fine with the 2500 jumpered as cable select. Other systems/mobos tend to have problems.