hello, i have a sata harddrive so i have 2 free ide slots, i have one running a dvd drive, and today recieved another one, i looked in my motherboard box to find another ide cable but it says harddrive ide, i can also tell cos it has more pin thingys (80 if memory serves from ccna lol) i was wandering is there any harm in putting that one in my mobo to use my dvd drive or shall i buy a 40 pin one for my dvd drive? also does one have to one primary master and theo ther primary slave? THanks hdfk
You can use that cable for hard drives and CD-ROM devices. 80 pin IDE cables are for DMA/UDMA devices, where as 40 pin cables only support PIO modes. You should always use 80 pin cables nowadays. 40 pin cables are ancient and should be thrown in the bin Seen as you have 2 spare IDE slots, you should use them both and change the jumpers on both DVD-ROMS to 'master'. If you only have one IDE cable, then both DVD-ROMs will have to share the same IDE slot. You need to set on of the DVD-ROMs to 'master' (or cable select) and plug it on the END of the cable. Set the second DVD-ROM to 'slave' (or cable select) and plug it in the MIDDLE of the cable.
thats what im off to do now thank you very much i was worried cos asus put harddrive cable on the mobo and i didnt wanna throw it in there for it to kill its self, thanks!!!!
Yes you should always use the first IDE channel for hard drives (& slave DVD-ROM), and the second channel for CD-ROMs, ZIPs etc. Some motherboards don't require this, while others do.
oops... sorry. Did not read your details correctly. Yes, you are correct. You can use both for your DVD drives.
