I'm trying to figure out the lengths I'm going to need for my devices. I want to know if it matters which IDE devices share the same cable. Right now the hard drive and the DVD drive share the same IDE cable, and the cable from the CD-RW goes strat to the board. Can I run a round dual IDE cable from the board to the CD-RW and the DVD, since there fight next to each other and run a singal IDE cable to the hard drive, since it's right next to the IDE slots on the board?

Put the two cd-rom drives on the same IDE. Keep HardDrives on seperate IDE cables from other things and themselves. Harddrives should have their own cables. Also make sure your cables are able to make large bends and not sharp ones. It helps them be able to transfer info faster.

If you run out of cables you can put a harddrive with a cdrom. you should put your OS harddrive with the lease used device and your second hd with your cdrw /dvd or something like that. set the harddrives on master, and the others on slave. master is the middle plug if you use cable select.

I have
primary master: HD 1 40gb WD with OS
primary slave: 40x CDrom
secondary master HD 2 80gb WD file storage
secondary slave: 32x/12x/8x/8x cdrw-dvd combo
I had some trouble at the beginning, but if you set it up corectly it runs very good

personally i would not put a Hard drive with a cd-rom drive. daz crazy. last time i done dat my HD waz makin' sounds when i connected it with cd rom. blah.

right now heres mine

primary master: LS-120 drive
Primary Secondary: maxtor 60GB

SEcondary Master: DVd-rom drive
Secondary Slave - CD-RW drive

3rd IDE Master: maxtor 80GB
3rd IDE slave: maxtor 120GB

4th IDE Master: maxtor 120GB
4th IDe Slave: empty

i do have a sony dru-500a dvd burner comin' hopefully tuesday. imma love everything down one leavin' da 3rd ide master empty and put the dvd burner dere. dan i'll have all 4 ide full hehe

oh btw i got onboard raid (gigabyte 7VAXP)

why don't you have the 2 120gigs on the same channel....and run them RAID?

I have written it somewhere here: In one time moment IDE cable can be used only by one device. So place it as you need (more used devices on separate chanells). B)

heh yup..thats why you dont' put a CD writer with the cd rom chanel...cause they have to share..and it slows down transfers as they are "sharing" the pathway to the mobo....i got the following set up

IDE 1 - 52x CD ROM (master)
IDE 2 - 50X CDRW (master)
IDE 3 - 80gig Maxtor (master) \
IDE 3 - 80gig Maxtor (slave) \ @ RAID 0
IDE 4 - 80gig Maxtor (master) /
IDE 4 - 80gig Maxtor (slave) /

bass_freak: does with new mobos with RAID on-board I can install 8 devices (2 RAID chanells and 2 IDE)?

Im pretty sure thats how most are...I can have 4 IDE devices on IDE 1 and 2...and run RAID...or if i decedided not to...just reg ide on ide 3 and 4....so i could have just 1 hard drive and 7 cd roms if i wanted to in theory....but i think if you choose not to run raid...your bootable drive must be IDE 1 Master...im not 100% sure on this tho :/

But if you choose to use raid..i think you can only have hard drives on ide 3 and ide 4..even if you only run raid on ide 3....im no raid expert...i know after about an hour of messin around i got it to work...and loaded windows xp *shivers* and mandrake 8.1

Look. If I'll install 4 driver intro RAID (C:) and 2 drives on IDE2 and 2 CDs on IDE1. I think it must be ok. Isn't it?

Bass Freak is right, if you run RAID, you must have hard drives, but you can use the IDE connectors as regular ones. With your setup it should be like this...

Master 1:Hard Drive
Slave 1:Nothing
Master 2:CD-RW
Slave 2:DVD

But with RAID, you could have it mirror or strip...Mirror is when two equal hard drives copy everything onto two hard drives for extra security. If one drive fails, you still have the other....Strip is when half the data is on each drive for speed, but if one goes down, so does the other.

I'm talking about witch HDD in this conf will be master (RAID or Master on IDE1)? And will it normally go with Master on IDE1 (HDD) and RAID together?

So how do I know which is the master and which is the slave the way it is now. And if I change the way it is now how will that effect it. I also have a Liteon CD/RW, DVD, and an IBM 60G HD. I do a lot of burning. I'm not really shure if I'm optimizing all of it's speed with the way it's set up now, but I would really like to.

the middle is master is you use cable select or you can use the jumper settings. look in the manual for the hds and cds have simbols near the jumpers.