Sounds like a good plan to me

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mrlipring's view is what Matrox advise - A/V and export drives must be on separate IDE channels. They specifically warn against having both on the same controller.

On the way's setup is the Matrox optimal config for the P4C800 board he's using.

Also, hasn't it always been inadvisable to have two optical drives on the same cable?

svhs - are you using the same drive for capture & export?

Conventional wisdom's always been not to share channels with opticals. At least that's what I was told when working for a PC manufacturer (which won several performance awards )

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Yes, here's how I set up the hard-disks:
Primary Master: WD Caviar JB, 80 GB: 20 GB system partition (FAT32), 60 GB data partition (NTFS)
Primary Slave: WD Caviar JB, 80 GB: 80 GB partition (NTFS) for capture & export of video works.
And the OS is Windows XP Home Edition.

so everyone is saying something different...

im gonna put pc upside down and see how this affects it!

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2 x 21\" HITACHI super contrast monitors.....2 x 200 gig HDD\'s....2 x 512mb dane-elec pc3200.....TV in card (cheap and sh!t!)....3.2 P4 HT....BOARD - ASUS P4C800 - C delux (fsb 800mhz DUAL DDR 400)....GRAPHICS - ATI 256ddr POWERCOLOUR Radeon 9600XT (500mhz/400mhz)....MATROX RT.X100 real time editing card

If that doesn't work either, try punching it hard, several times, during boot-up and pouring coffee in the floppy.

And finally here's what Pinnacle advises:
"HARD DRIVE SETUP

Use the following setup for hassle-free video. The assumption is that your system has two IDE slots supporting a total of four IDE devices. Some motherboards also ship with onboard RAID, allowing you to add multiple IDE drives with ease.

• Primary Master: C: or main drive used for applications. Don’t capture video to this
drive.
• Primary slave: CDROM, DVDROM
• Secondary master: AV drive. This drive should be as clean and as fast as
possible, with video captured to this drive.
• Secondary slave: AV drive 2.A CDRW drive or DVD-RAM drive."
(found here: http://wwwus.pinnaclesys.com/docload...01&Langue_ID=7)

I just stumbled upon this one while browsing Pinnacle's site for updates, and this is setup I'll do next time I open my PC case (I'm too lazy to do it now, it would mean turning on the lights, pulling all cables out and worst of all, digging for the screwdriver)...
So OnTheWay, this might be an answer to your problem, if you want to take it into consideration.

This advice is becoming somewhat redundant with SATA now ubiquitous on new motherboards. None of my 5 drives are conneted via PATA on my system.

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Well in Eastern Europe, SATA is still too good to be true for most of us enthusiasts. I'm doing freelance work (collecting unemployment, that is) and just can't afford SATA for now, in terms of investment return.
I'll go for it when I upgrade to Athlon64 (definitely by the end of this year).

The biggest advantage in my non expert opinion is the ease of adding more drives.

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