SATA cable for the drive and IDE cable for the DVD ROm

hi

i'm planning to use sata cables for my pc(replacing old IDE cables). i have an IDE drive and SATA motherboard, i'm planning to use the IDE to SATA adapter as opposed to buying the sata drive. for the DVD ROM i cant afford to buy another one (the adapter for the DVD rom).
so, can i just use the same IDE cable for the DVD rom (using the IDE port on the motherboard, obviously) while at the same time using the IDE to SATA adapter and SATA cables for the DRIVE?are there complications? do i have to change some things in the BIOS or stuffs like that?

thanks

 

I agree with Pete - I don't see any advantage to doing this. Perhaps if you told us what your goal is, we can offer a more efficient solution.

If your goal is to get rid of the big flat ribbon cables used by the EIDE devices (and floppy drive, if present), then I recommend simply replacing the cables with round IDE (and floppy, if present) cables of a more appropriate length. These not only make the interior look more tidy, the round cables, if properly routed, do not interfere with the necessary front to back air flow like the big ribbon cables often do.

 

Yeah I understand, I thought putting SATA cables/connectors would actually do half the job of speedin it up, you know I thought maybe, SATA cables use different type of wires or anything ike that. But it was a dumb idea.

Anyway about the Master/Slave thing. My IDE drive is connected to the middle outlet/port of the IDE cable and the end of that cable to the optical drive. i havent had problems with that setup. any suggestions on that?

 

No, the cables/wires/connectors themselves have nothing to do with data transfer speeds. Their only advantage is their size makes them more convenient and less restricting on air flow.

The "master" position is always on the opposite end from the system/motherboard connector. And the "slave" position is always in the middle. If not labeled you can tell which end is which as the slave is off-centered and always closer to the master end.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it!

 

Point taken. But manuals and the like suggest that the Hard Drives be connected to the far end of the cable, optical drive should be at the 'middle'. Maybe you can explain why it still works (not that I don't want it to), forgive me but i want to learn this stuff even if i sound so stupid/ignorant.

 

The stupid questions are the ones not asked.

First, understand when talking about IDE drives, you are talking about a technology that is nearly 25 years old and is phasing out rapidly (finally) being replaced by SATA, now up to version 3.0.

The reason it was "suggested" HDs be connected to the Master end was to avoid confusion with drive letter assignments. With one cable, C is automatically assigned to the Master and D to the slave (assuming no partitions on the HD). With two cables and HDs on both masters, the Primary IDE Master became C and the Secondary IDE Master became D. The Primary Slave E and Secondary Slave F - again, assuming no partitions.

In the early days, it was much more difficult to change drive letter assignments. Current versions of Windows let you manipulate that much easier, but if you change those now, you may end up confusing Windows because it will expect to find installed programs (including critical Windows components) based on the current drive letter assignments.