IDE cable problems

ciyan · 21 Oct 2006 at 19:36

IDE Cable Queries

Hello,

I am trying to add a second hard drive to my comp, but it only technically supports one HDD, as in theres only 1 HDD bay in the case.

I also need a IDE cable which has both a master and slave connector, 2 cables won't work, however because my case only has one HDD bay I'm having to use a DVD bay to keep the hard drive in. The dvd bay is really quite far away, and on top of the first hard drive meaning that on a standard cable, the slave connector won't reach the dvd bay, and therefore the HDD. However, these don't appear to be normal IDE ribbons, and am I right in saying that the slave connector is on a seperate lead to the master connector? Do these have a master and slave connector? Are these even a replacement for normal IDE ribbons?

If the slave is indeed on a seperate lead, then the slave connector should reach.

Oh, and will these work for ULTRA-ATA 100?

Thanks for any input, and sorry for all the questions!

mctiny · 21 Oct 2006 at 19:43

First things First.

IDE devices are deemed as Master or Slave via the hardware and not the cable, unless both devices are set to "cable Select".

The cables you link to are just normal cables, they have to connectors for master/slave operations.

Yes they will work with ATA-100 as well

I'm assuming you have more than one IDE channel upon your motherboard and in wich case, if you do, then you just need to get another IDE cable and run that direct to the drive.

ciyan · 21 Oct 2006 at 19:49

Oh, okay then. But they do have 2 seperate connectors for connecting 2 HDD's up right?

And no, my motherboard only has one interface, which is why I need a cable with 2 connectors.

Thanks.

mctiny · 21 Oct 2006 at 19:54

ciyan said:
Oh, okay then. But they do have 2 seperate connectors for connecting 2 HDD's up right?

And no, my motherboard only has one interface, which is why I need a cable with 2 connectors.

Thanks.

IDE cabels and the IDE standard only supports two "Devices" per channel. so you could have two HDD's on oone connector but not two HDD's and DVD.

ciyan · 21 Oct 2006 at 20:05

I only want to connect 2 hard drives, I don't want to connect any dvd reader or anything else to that connector.

thefishdude · 22 Oct 2006 at 12:30

one cable will run two hdd on the back of the hdd there will be some jumpers you set one to master and one to slave

you can get ide cables with 1 or 2 connectors on em.

Tosk · 22 Oct 2006 at 16:49

set the hds up like this, and you could put your dvd/cd/rom on the 2nd IDE cable as master

hope this helps you

Darg · 23 Oct 2006 at 15:36

With 2 IDE channels you can have 3 HDDs and 1 DVD drive. All you need are the two cables and the correct settings. I set my DVD drive to master on the second cable and my file server to slave on it. My primary master is my C boot drive and the slave is my main game storage drive.