1 IDE cable, and 2 Hard Drives...

[Matthius]

Okay, i have 2 hard drives and only one ide cable. how do i get them to work at the same time? is it even possible?

[Rampant CL]

Assuming there is no cd drive....

Get the hard disk which you want as the main one (read primary master / disk which windows will be on) and look at the back. There will be a set of pin pairs, with a jumper on one pair.

Set the jumper so it is on Master.

Take the other disk (read primary slave / disk with other stuff on it) and look at the pins.

Set the jumper on it to Slave.

Now plug in both disks on the same cable.

While this would work it would severely reduce performance when copying disk to disk. Go buy another cable, and then you can set the primary slave to master, and put it on the second cable, = secondary master.

But this will work until you get a cable

[zsynth]

Just so you don't have any problems, make sure you connect the MASTER hd(with the o\s on it) to the END of the ribbon cable. The SLAVE hd is connected to the middle connector. You might want to also try using the CABLE SELECT jumper settings on BOTH hd's (keeping the MASTER hd on the end and slave in the middle) It sometimes will work better. You'll notice how much faster the computer boots if it works properly.

[stncttr908]

Heh, I've had both my 30GB Maxtor and my 10GB Maxtor on the same IDE channel since I bought them...I never really gave it a second thought. Perhaps I should move one of my optical drives over to the primary slave?

Granted, this is only a DMA33 board, so the difference probably wouldn't be too great.

[Matthius]

DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT!!! i forgot all about the jumper thingies on the back of the hdd's. crap. i got it to work, and better still, i just connected to 2 computers together to get the stuff from the hdd i needed.

[Dazz]

Make sure the fastest hard drive is in the middle of the cable which is the begining, an the slowest one at the end. ATA133 Master ATA100 slave etc.