master/slave cable orientation

[mizery]

i have my hard drive as master on middle connector and my dvd as slave on the end connector per manual but i just read a post on another forum where they advised someone to put the master on the end and the slave in the middle ,so do i have mine wrong or what,im having absolutely no problems

 

[Dark]

By experience I would say if you're unlucky, your drives will disapper sometimes in windows. That's the problem I see most often with that kind of setup.

 

[mizery]

hey dark,which one are you talking about ,my way or there way,or better yet how do you have yours

 

[Ashen Shugar]

The only time the configuration you mention matters is when you have ATA/66 and ATA/33 hard drives hooked up on the same 80-pin cable. For UltraATA/66 to work then, the ATA/66 drive should be on master and at the end of the cable and the ATA/33 drive should be slave and be in the middle. But, in your case, it doesn't really matter. And you should see no problems.

 

[Wuming]

huh? i don't understand... do you mean for a normal ATA33 ide connection, it doesn't matter if you connect a drive set to master to the middle of the cable, and a drive set to slave at the end of the cable?

 

[Ashen Shugar]

Yes, for normal 40-pin IDE cables (used for PIO Modes 1-4 and UltraATA/33), it doesn't really matter if the master is hooked up in the middle of the cable. I used to have 2 UltraATA/33 drives hooked up on a 40-pin cable, with the master in the center, and it worked just fine. No problems whatsoever.

Only the newer 80-pin IDE cables (used for UltraATA/66 and UltraATA/100) seemingly require you to put the UltraATA/66 or 100 device as master at the end of the IDE cable if the other device is UltraATA/33 or slower. This is to prevent the UltraATA/33 drive from slowing down the UltraATA/66 (or higher) drive to UltraATA/33 levels.

 

[Dark]

I have problems once in a while with the ATA33, putting the master in the middle made the master disappers sometimes in win2k. It happens more than once and the solution was always to put it back to the end of the cable.