Correct Cabeling

Hi, I would like to know the best way (correct way) of connecting my bunch of drives.
I have installed 1 PCI IDE ATA 133 Connector.
The Drives are: 3 IDE HDD and 3 Optical IDE drives.
I have enough connectors it is just a matter of connecting them in the right order. On my other PC’s using 80 wire cables I set my drives on Cable Select. In general it seems to work ok but I don’t have that many drives connected, so this may not work in this case.
Regards
Hawk22

 

I would set the main OS HDD at the end of the cable with any other HDD containing an OS on the middle of the cable on the Primary IDE controller of the Motherboard. Use Master w/xxxx*(What brand HDD?)/Slave or Cable Select.

I would place my main optical burner as Master (end of cable) and another optical (not burner) as Slave (middle if cable) on the Secondary IDE controller. I have not had any luck setting opticals drives with one being a burner as Cable Select (Always got burning errors).

On your PCI IDE card place the remaining HDD as Master w/xxxx* (depends on brand) and optical as Slave or Cable Select. Reverse the drives if the optical is a burner and use Master w/xxxx*/Slave.

*My Western Digitals use Master w/ Slave Present.

 

Hi and thanks Wiskeyman, I have decided to Retire one Optical and one HDD 40 gig. This way I then cabled them all as Master C.S. and it is running very well.
By the way this is the PC that I had assembled from scratch on the Test Bench the Post that you also helped me along the way. I had now taken all out of the case and replaced it with the parts running on the Bench. Thanks to this Board here it all ended up running very smoothly. Grinning from one Ear to the other.
cheers
hawk22