Ide Snafu

T

twist

New member
I'm building a new PC (about time!). When I built my last one, there was much discussion about installing as "Standard PC" and disabling ACPI.
I'm wondering if that's still true or even necessary with all the improvements in the newer hardware.

Question #2. In my new case a standard IDE cable won't reach between the HDD and the CD drive. The overall length to the MOBO is fine. It's just the shorter section of the cable that's too short. Does anyone make IDE cables for drives that are physically far apart? What would happen if I turned a standard cable end for end, plugging the end intended for the MOBO into my HDD (40 pin 80 cond.) and the end intended for the HDD into the MOBO? That would reach, but will it work?

TIA

Twist
 
twist said:
Question #2. In my new case a standard IDE cable won't reach between the HDD and the CD drive. The overall length to the MOBO is fine. It's just the shorter section of the cable that's too short. Does anyone make IDE cables for drives that are physically far apart? What would happen if I turned a standard cable end for end, plugging the end intended for the MOBO into my HDD (40 pin 80 cond.) and the end intended for the HDD into the MOBO? That would reach, but will it work?

TIA

Twist
Click to expand...

Why don't you just put the HDD on the primary IDE channel and the CD drive on the secondary IDE channel? They'll perform better that way too. Just use separate cables and make each drive the master on whichever channel it's on.
 
My CD Burner already occupies "Secondary Master". I want to install another CD ROM as Primary Slave.


Twist
 
You would probably be better off running it as secondary slave. While it generally works, mixing HDD's and CD drives on a single IDE channel can cause performance issues.

(disclaimer: this school of thought is from a couple of years ago, so things may have changed)

Basically, every IDE device has an internal drive controller that governs the flow of data on that IDE channel. If you have a master and a slave device on the channel, the master device's drive controller is the boss. The drive controllers in HDD's are optimized for an HDD's dataflow patterns, and the drive controllers in CD drives are obviously optimized for the patterns of CD drives.

If you slave a CD drive to a HDD, then the CD drive is effectively being controlled by the drive controller in the HDD. Problem: the CD drive knows how to run itself better than the HDD does. If you keep HDD's on the primary channel and CD drives on the secondary channel, then you have HDD drive controllers controlling HDD's and and CD drive controllers controlling CD drives.
 
I can hardly believe it myself, but I switched the cable end for end last night with the CD ROM drive still in the middle. It boots up fine and recognizes the CD drives too. I haven't tried transferring any data back and forth yet though.
F.Y.I.

Twist
 
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