# two devices on one controller

## warrior

Hi, guys!

I have ASUS W1N laptop with hard drive and cd/dvd/r-rw drive plugged to the same controller.

When i using programs, like cdrecord system halts, during burning process. And sometimes discs burned incorrectly.

I tried to unmask interrupt for hard drive 

```
hdparm -u1 /dev/hda
```

 but with no result.

Also, i tried to plug these devices to different controllers, opened laptop and saw, that ide connectors are soldered to mainboard, and there are no one chance to do it. I wonder, if chipset has two ide controllers inside, why guys in asus used just one of them.

Can i solve this problem with cd/dvd burning?

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## fangorn

It is a known issue that Burners and Harddisks can cause problems when at the same Port of the IDE controller. Especially when using CableSelect as all Notebook burners do.

The problem is IIRC the difference in Communication protokolls. The Harddisk uses higher Modi of DMA transfers. U could try setting them to the same level (the highest the Burner suuports) with hdparm. But no guarantee for that to work.

Putting them to two different channels as primary and secondary master could solve the problem, but only if they used a Burner that is connected as master if connected alone (At my combination of laptop  (medion) and Burner (toshiba) it was recognized as secondary slave with very poor transfer rates and Windows and the BIOS didn't see it at all). It could work, but I would ask the ASUS Support first!

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## warrior

the problem lay in the impossibility to change IDE controller port  :Sad: 

i've played with hdparm and got no result...  :Sad: 

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## fangorn

My only tip in this case is to nag the guys at asus support really hard

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## warrior

ok.. thanx

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## dtor

ASUS will not be able to do anything. The problem is that PATA devices (unlike SCSI) do not support "disconnect" mode. That means that IDE channel is busy until device completes the command, so your laptop can't read data from your hard drive until the burner finished sucking the next portion into its cache. On top of that commands like "finalize" take like 15 seconds to complete. 

As you have noticed HDD and CD[-RW] are usulaly fixed (soldered) on channel 0 in lapops and you can't do anything about it. Just make sure that both HD and the burner working in DMA mode, try not loading ide-scsi and use ide-cd and generally leave the box alone while burning. Or buy an external enclosure (both USB and Firewire usually work OK, at least for me) - this way you can stick faster burner into it and not have this problem at all.

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## warrior

dtor, thank you for your detailed answer. Now i know what exatly happens inside.

Thank you.

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## NeddySeagoon

warrior,

Do you have DMA enabled for the drives?

Try 

```
hdparam -tT /dev/hda
```

and 

```
hdparm /dev/hda
```

 and post your output.

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## warrior

 *NeddySeagoon wrote:*   

> warrior,
> 
> Do you have DMA enabled for the drives?
> 
> 

 

ofcoz i have... here is output...

```
squirrel ~ # hdparm /dev/hda && hdparm /dev/hdb && hdparm -tT /dev/hda && cat /etc/conf.d/hdparm | grep -v ^#

/dev/hda:

 multcount    = 16 (on)

 IO_support   =  3 (32-bit w/sync)

 unmaskirq    =  1 (on)

 using_dma    =  1 (on)

 keepsettings =  1 (on)

 readonly     =  0 (off)

 readahead    = 256 (on)

 geometry     = 65535/16/63, sectors = 60011642880, start = 0

/dev/hdb:

 IO_support   =  0 (default 16-bit)

 unmaskirq    =  0 (off)

 using_dma    =  1 (on)

 keepsettings =  0 (off)

 readonly     =  0 (off)

 readahead    = 256 (on)

 HDIO_GETGEO failed: Invalid argument

/dev/hda:

 Timing cached reads:   2572 MB in  2.00 seconds = 1284.27 MB/sec

 Timing buffered disk reads:   78 MB in  3.06 seconds =  25.48 MB/sec

hda_args="-d1 -X66 -u1 -m16 -a256 -A1 -c3 -k1 -A1"

cdrom0_args="-d1 -u0"

```

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## NeddySeagoon

warrior,

That looks like its as good as it gets on your hardware.

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