IDE drive position on cable

[Stonekiller]

Hi,

 

I'm using two Cooldrive 6 HD coolers for my PATA Hitachi's in my NZXT Lexa case, this means they only fit in the bottom two 5.25" bays as in the top two they foul the door.

 

What I'm wondering is:

 

a) does it matter if I put the Slave DVD's at the end of the IDE leads ?

B) Should I have HD master/DVD Slave on each IDE or HD Master/HD slave on one Ide and DVD master/DVD slave on the other?

 

Both DVD burners are Identical NEC 4551's

 

(Apologies on incorrect sig BTW)

[swaaye]

The end is for master, the middle for slave. If only one drive on cable, set it to master and connect it to end. Don't connect something to middle and leave end unattached.

[Stonekiller]

Right, thanks for that Swaaye but unfortunately it doesn't really answer my question!

 

I've checked the electrical connections and as I expected they are identical at both the Master and Slave terminals, unlike the old Drive A/B floppies which have a twist in the cable.

 

It's not a question of leaving one or other plug disconnected as I have two PATA hard Drives and two DVD drives.

 

I currently have one HD and one DVD on each Channel, but the HD's are set to Master and placed on the middle connector while the DVD's are set as slaves and are at the end of the cable. As I said in my original post this is due to Physical constriaints in that the door on the front of the case won't shut if I put the HD coolers in the top two bays.

 

I know that the recommended way of setting it is Master at the end and slave in the middle, what I was wondering was why this is, as I cannot see any elecrical difference whatsoever in the terminals.

 

So again I think the 2nd question I still need an answer for and it would also be interesting to know exactly why its recommended to use the standard layout as the electrical connections are in fact identical.

[Donski]

The names "Master" and "Slave" really don't mean what they say, there really is no such thing as master, it really just means drive #1 and #2. With old motherboards, it would always look to the #1 drive on the first IDE channel for the boot sector. With Windows 98, it would use those setting of master, slave and IDE channel to set your drive letters. With XP it starts out that way, but you can change your drive letters to suit your preference. So these old rules of master and slave settings were so you could set your drive letters using Windows 95 & 98.

 

Using master and slave jumper settings are becoming obsolete. Some older motherboards require that you use master and slave settings, but I believe all motherboards in the past few years can use cable select. For a while they were making both types. I saw a board made in 1999 that used cable select while I've seen another board from 2001 that required the old master/slave settings. I've even heard of boards that require you to use cable select, while master/slave jumper settings wouldn't work. I believe yours, like mine, can use either.

 

With a cable select capable motherboard you can set your boot priority in your BIOS instead of having to do it with jumpers. When using cable select, the master and slave settings are automatically set through an extra lead in your 80 core ribbon cable which makes your jumper settings redundant. When doing this, it sets the drive at the end of the cable to master and the drive in the middle to slave. If you set the drive at the end to cable select and the one in the middle to master, the motherboard sees them both as master and gets confused. This is why they suggest what you said, there's less chance of confusion.

 

The whole point is that it really doesn't matter how you connect your drives anymore. You can jumper them all to cable select and just make sure you have your BIOS's boot priority set to the drive containing your operating system. Today, with cable select, everything can be set in your BIOS and Disk Management.

[PL4YD34D]

thats all good reasoning Donski but for safety i would recommend stonekiller uses the same cable for opticals and again for HDDs and also uses the end of the cable for boot drive if poss. considering the ease of setting up this way to begin with it would seem stupid to 'tempt fate' by going against convention over something dumb like drive orientation

[Donski]

thats all good reasoning Donski but for safety i would recommend stonekiller uses the same cable for opticals and again for HDDs and also uses the end of the cable for boot drive if poss. considering the ease of setting up this way to begin with it would seem stupid to 'tempt fate' by going against convention over something dumb like drive orientation

It's funny you say this, because I know a guy in a different forum that swears it's better to have one hard drive and one DVD-RW drive on each cable. He claims he has better transfer rate that way. I've tried it both ways, and I don't see any advantage either way.

 

As far as having your boot drive on the end of the cable, and also the first IDE channel. You'll never have to reset your boot priority whenever you change your drive configuration or reset your BIOS. So this is a good rule of thumb, otherwise it can be a hassle when playing with removable drives. So I'll have to agree with you there, even though it can still work flawlessly with any drive orientation.

[Lensman]

The system 'polls' the IDE ports in the following sequence (sometimes the ports will be shown as IDE 1 and IDE 2) -

 

1) IDE 0 Master

2) IDE 1 Master

3) IDE 0 Slave

4) IDE 1 Slave

 

As has been suggested above, the ideal spot for a Boot IDE HD is as Master on IDE 0, as the system will poll that drive first.

 

Next, the best place for a DVD-RW is as a Master on IDE1 for reasons I will get into below. If you have a second optical drive, the next best place is as Slave on IDE 0. The reason for this position is not so much because of the order the opticals are polled, rather the reason is that because the drives are on opposite channels, the opticals can directly communicate with each other, bypassing the CPU, resulting in faster dupes etc.

 

Finally, a second HD goes in as a Slave on IDE 1, again for the reasons stated above. I have used this setup flawlessly for many years.

 

On your ribbon (or rounded) cables, the middle connector is always slave and the end connector is always Master. In every case, the Master plugs must be filled first, due to potential signal loss in the unterminated cable.

 

Where drives are concerned, always use the Master/Slave jumpers for your opticals and for most hard drives (WD comes to mind) you can just pull the Master/Slave jumper right off. If you go this route, you should have the IDE channels set for 'Cable Select' in the BIOS. That said, some drives must be jumpered for Master/Slave and so you must configure the IDE channels as such in the BIOS.

 

Hope that helps.

[PL4YD34D]

i can agree with Lensman for the most part but would add that if you plan on putting your HDDs and opticals on different channels turn off AUTO negotiation in BIOS and detect the drives manually just to be sure everything is peachy.

[Lensman]

...but would add that if you plan on putting your HDDs and opticals on different channels turn off AUTO negotiation in BIOS and detect the drives manually just to be sure everything is peachy.

 

Yup, I can work with that. As PL4YD33D mentions, the ultimate solid BIOS configuration is to manually set the drives as Master/Slave.

[Stonekiller]

Yeah I heard somewhere that it's better to have the opticals on separate channels for the same reason...I heard it a very long time ago though so it may not be relevant now!

 

As it goes if I did put both HD's on one channel and both Opticals on the other, I would no longer have the problem with their position on the IDE cables... Currently I have the Boot set as master on IDE0, but in the middle of the cable. I have the Data HD on Master IDE1 again on the middle connector. Both DVD drives are on the end connectors with the jumpers set to slave.

 

From what I've read above I think I may be okay, with possibly one more change to set the Data HD to Slave on IDE1 and the DVD drive on IDE1 to Master, so that there is a Master DVD drive (also this would mean the Cable is used as it should be)

 

It's actually working fine as it's currently set up, I'm not sure if it's because I've swapped the Phillips DVD burners for NEC or because I've rolled back the IDE drivers but I no longer get BSOD when using Powerdirector to split up an 18GB AVI file automatically.

 

It's interesting to hear there is an "extra" wire in the 80 way cable...I got my continuity tester out on my Akasa Cables and I couldn't actually see any electrical difference between the master and slave plugs...perhaps some manufacturers support cable select and some dont...funnily enough when I put in the NEC drives I also got rid of the DFI IDE and floppy cables too, so I guess it could also have something to do with that!

 

Tell you what though, for something as "simple" as cables, I'm amazed how many differing opinions I've received!

[PL4YD34D]

As has been suggested above, the ideal spot for a Boot IDE HD is as Master on IDE 0, as the system will poll that drive first.

 

Next, the best place for a DVD-RW is as a Master on IDE1 for reasons I will get into below.

 

 

On your ribbon (or rounded) cables, the middle connector is always slave and the end connector is always Master. In every case, the Master plugs must be filled first, due to potential signal loss in the unterminated cable..

 

 

take note of this please Stonekiller. this is really all you need to know.

[Stonekiller]

Ok then, I'll put both HD's on one Ide and both DVD rams on the other! This solves the issue with cable position, I'll let you all know how things go!