Multiple CDRW drives: one machine

First, if you are going to attempt to burn 3 cd's at once, probally better forget it.

Most CD burning software has a limitation that no other programs are running when the burn attempt is made. Burning a cd is highly cpu and memory intensive.
You can physically hook up all four disk units at once and all MS systems except for NT 4.0 (you will have to tell 4.0 they are there) will recognize them. I have three in mine with three harddrives, however you will need to install additional cards to handle the additional drives unless you purchase scuzi drives (which you can daisy chain, this even requires another card). The advantage of the additional cards would be additional com and parallel ports, the disavantage is you will proballyrun out of IRQ's.

If you are needing to make multiple copies of one cd or several cd's, I suggest buying a cd duplicator. It is cheaper, will probally be a lot faster, and will not tie up your new system.

I do not know of any software as of this date that will let you burn three at once.

Hope this helps.

Paul.

Alot of what the prior poster commented on is very true and building your own tower can get very intensive.

Most multi drive units are built along the scsi channel due to the native multiple drives on one card and better data flow performance. There are scsi cards that have two full channels on one card and have their own contoller chips that enhance the potentials for success.

As to drives I would have to say that only Yamaha which has some very nice technology or the industry standardPlextors would be the ones to use. Again they are not going to come cheap.

On the software side, I did run across this one called RecordNow Max which claims to be able to handle multiple drives. However, the low price for the software makes me wonder. Did they come up with a break through or will you need like dual processors to make it happen, I don't know. But heck you could look them up on the web and call their tech heads and see what they say. Surely they had to put something together to test it one and if you wiggle them abit they probably would want to boast as to just what they did.

Lastly, the cost factor sometimes just doesn't seem to make sense as has been stated. If you go to www.diskmakers.com, these folks are dedicated to the making CDs for all kinds of people, and look at some of the equipment they have to offer you can crank out a bunch of CDs in a very short time. Figure you have about a couple hundred per CDRW 600 a hundred to a hundred fifty for a really nice controller, another 75 to 100 for a CDR and your running in the 8 to 9 bills. They have a unit at 590 that duplicates 20 per hour and no PC needed. And others, so again they might be someone to talk to about your desires and besides they would guarantee it and be able to service it when needed.

So just some thoughts and hope this is helpful to you.