Quick question about having 1 IDE device on motherboard

DJMK4 · 10 Apr 2009 at 18:52

Say someone has a motherboard with 1 IDE slot (and the rest SATA), if they had an IDE HDD and an IDE CD-RW drive, would it be possible to use these both?

IE Put one as master, one as slave?

FaceplantSi · 10 Apr 2009 at 19:07

I don't see why not, I mean that's what we all used to do before SATA came along isn't it?

pastymuncher · 10 Apr 2009 at 19:09

Hdd as master, DVD as slave. Done it loads of time in the past.

Robzere31 · 10 Apr 2009 at 19:10

DJMK4 said:
IE Put one as master, one as slave?

Done it this way in the past, no problems.

FaceplantSi · 10 Apr 2009 at 19:12

pastymuncher said:
Hdd as master, DVD as slave. Done it loads of time in the past.

Ah, the joys of jumpers! It took ages to find one the other day for flashing a Vertex SSD! Even had to go down to the local shop to buy a jumper!

Sasahara · 10 Apr 2009 at 22:10

Master and Slave is so 1990's, cable select ***. ;p

Puppetmaster · 11 Apr 2009 at 00:50

FaceplantSi said:
Ah, the joys of jumpers! It took ages to find one the other day for flashing a Vertex SSD! Even had to go down to the local shop to buy a jumper!

how much did that set you back?

ste_bla · 11 Apr 2009 at 01:14

It will work but will be slow, as the devices on a IDE ribbon only run the speed of the slowest competent. So optical are 33 and most hard drives are 100 or 133.

Not an issue if its just a back up drive but if main then will be slow.

K.C. Leblanc · 11 Apr 2009 at 12:53

ste_bla said:
It will work but will be slow, as the devices on a IDE ribbon only run the speed of the slowest competent. So optical are 33 and most hard drives are 100 or 133.

Not an issue if its just a back up drive but if main then will be slow.

That used to be the case, but modern motherboards don't have this issue. Also 33 is easily fast enough for most IDE drives, it tends to be speed of the actual drive that's the bottleneck, not the interface.