Hard drive, CDRW IDE cable help

thephantom114 · 14 Feb 2006 at 15:26

Hey Guys

I've just bought and almost finished building my first system, except for one snag. I only have one IDE cable to connect my CD drive and IDE HD. It can split into two but I was wondering if this is Ok as I always though you could only do that for HD and HD, or do I need to buy another IDE cable. Any help is appreciated.

The_TailGunner · 14 Feb 2006 at 15:43

should be fine...make sure that the hdd is set as master, and th cd drive as slave

TG

semi-pro waster · 14 Feb 2006 at 15:44

You can connect both on the same chain, it should no longer matter in the slightest. Although I prefer to only have one device per chain you can mix optical and hard drives easily.

thephantom114 · 14 Feb 2006 at 17:10

Thanks for the help guys, luckily though my friend found a spare IDE cable knocking around his place so his given that to me. Problem solved with no monetary loss or moving of drives so that cable reaches

ajm · 15 Feb 2006 at 09:29

Just make sure if the cable your friend gave you is only 40 wire to use that one for the cd-rw or it may slow your system down if used for the hdd.

PieEater · 15 Feb 2006 at 13:19

Did the 80 wire cables get round the problem that the devices would only operate at the speed of the slowest device on the ribbon, or is this still relevent for IDE connections?

AWPC · 15 Feb 2006 at 13:45

PieEater said:
Did the 80 wire cables get round the problem that the devices would only operate at the speed of the slowest device on the ribbon, or is this still relevent for IDE connections?

Yeah the chipsets now adjust for it when detecting the signal and can allow different speed devices on the same cable.