Jill,

Most systems will accommodate 4 IDE devices, which include hard drives,
CDROM, CDR/W, and DVD R/RW drives. You will usually have two channels,
primary and secondary, each with a master and slave connection. You do not
have to use all of them and usually you don't have to do anything to
activate or de-active them. Your boot hard drive is usually placed as the
primary master. A second device (hard drive or optical drive) can be placed
on any of the other connections. A usual set up would be to have a second
hard drive set up as a slave on the primary channel. You then have two
connections on the secondary channel for optical drives (CD and or DVD).
They can be set up either way, but it seems that most people recommend
setting up the DVD as the primary on the secondary channel. If you have
additional hard drives and are short of connections, the DVD can (usually)
burn both DVDs and CDR/Ws, so that would save you one connection.

Many of todays newer motherboards come with a new connection referred to as
SATA (for serial ATA as opposed to PATA for parallel ATA, the normal IDE
connection). This adds an entire new dimension to the equation. You did not
mention SATA, so it is probably not germane to your issues.

As to your question about burning DVDs without a DVD player, you cannot. The
DVD and CDR/W disks may look alike, but they are very different. A DVD
burner will usually burn both CDR/Ws and DVDs, but a CD burner will only
burn CDR/W.

If you have further questions or need additional clarification, let us know.

Jim Maki
[log in to unmask]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jill Bachhuber

>
> I want to add a DVD burner to my computer. I purchased a
> Pioneer DVD/CD Writer. My question is how do I attach the IDE
> data ribbon cables? (I have 2 IDE data ribbon cables in my PC
> - so as I understand it I should be able to hook up four
> devices to my motherboard. My question is do I need all three
> devices? Which do I get rid of if I do not need all three
> devices? And also which device needs to be the primary master
> and which the primary slave (or the secondary master) etc?
> I want to be able to create my own DVD's which include
> photos, music etc. I would also like to ocasionally burn
> DVD's (movie)and CD's(music). My PC had a DVD player and also
> a CD-ROM.
> If I do not have the DVD Player installed how can I burn
> DVD's? Can I remove the CD-ROM device since the DVD/CD Writer
> can read as well as write to either DVD's  or CD's?
> Please help me with this question ASAP.
> Jill Bachhuber
>

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