but as far as your set up, what you listed there is probably ideal. Reason being the IDE channel can only read or write one at a time...so if your doing a direct copy of cd to cd (or dvd to dvd if your cd-rom is in fact a dvd-rom) then it will be faster otherwise it will copy to the hd first. same goes for copying files from harddrive to cd/dvd it would have to read then write as apposed to a simultanous read/write.
-Darth Simon
p.s. Im more of a software guy, so while im pretty sure as to the accuracy of the above dont shoot me if i am missinformed.