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HD + DVD drive on same IDE cable?

P

PG

Diamond Member
I have a 2nd hard drive to put into my computer. Can I put it as a slave to my master DVD drive using the same IDE cable? Or should I put both hard drives on the same IDE cable?
My drive is the Toshiba 5X DVD/32X CD-ROM, model SD-1202 I think. I heard this type of setup would lower the performance of my new hard disk, but others say it is OK. I am only asking because I would rather not unplug and mess with the other hard drive, and the DVD drive's IDE cable already has an extra connector for another IDE device.

PG
 
It will work if you connect the new drive as slave to the DVD, the problem is that performance will be degraded if you are copying from the DVD to the second hard drive, or trying to read or write from the second hard drive whle the DVD is reading, because you can't access both devices on the same IDE channel at the same time. It won't make a difference which one is master or slave, because they are still on the same channel.

But you probably won't notice a difference 95% of the time. Hook it up whatever way is easiest, you can always change it later if you don't like it.
 
Thanks for the advice. I do appreciate it. I got everything connected and it all worked for a while, but now I have some probelems. I don't understand this machine at all.

It's very wierd. After a full shutdown and then a startup, no CD drive and no new hard drive under My Computer. Also there is a yellow exclmation mark next to the secondary IDE controller in the device manager. Yes, I have the CD drive and the new hard drive on the secondary IDE controller. The device manager says that the secondary IDE controller needs a driver update.

But, if I start up, then do a restart, the yellow exclmation mark is gone, but no new hard drive shows up. And the CD drive shows up now. In the BIOS I found some things that auto detect IDE devices, but they don't detect anything on the slave secondary controller. But it is connected, and it did work for a while. What happened? I also changed the IDE cable, but that didn't work.

PG
 
Are you sure the jumpers are set correctly?. One drive has to be set as slave and one as master - Otherwise they wont be detected in the BIOS...
 
kwisatz,

Thanks, I did have the jumper wrong. I was looking at the drive from the wrong side so I had the jumper backwards if you know what I mean. Everything works OK now.

PG


 
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