Hard drive / DVD conflict?

[James Knight]

Hello list

Over the last several months I've been trying to figure out why other
programs stall & slow down when I'm ripping CDs using iTunes & the internal
DVD drive.

When ripping, any other program which tries to use the hard disk will stall
out for several seconds at a time, usually with lots of spinning beachball.
This only happens using the internal DVD - if I rip from an external
firewire CD player of some kind then everything is fine.

Example:

Loading Entourage: not ripping, 3 bounces. When ripping, 20-30 bounces.
Select message in Entourage: not ripping - almost instant. When ripping, 4-5
seconds per message.

Other programs similar, it's always when the disk is being accessed.

Is this normal? In the Cube both the hard drive and DVD are on the same IDE
bus so can the controller just not cope with the volume of data?

Has anyone else experienced this?

TIA

James
-- 
James Knight
Norwich, UK

j.knight at kb-group.co.uk