Fact or Myth: IDE Drive cables

Post by **Giraffe }{unter** » Fri Mar 25, 2005 3:47 pm

Now in every book or manual they state the long end of the cable goes to the Motherboard, then the first plug goes to the Slave and the master goes on the end.

Now as far as I can see there is no issues flipping the cable around and plugging What is sopposed to be the "master drive's plug" into the Mobo, the short hop to the slave, and the Long end all the way to the master drive.

Anyone know of what kind of issues I may experiance with this? I'm running XP MCE's DVR-MS Video files off the slave drive with no problems so far. Looks to me like it's all just hooplah

Post by **Canis** » Fri Mar 25, 2005 3:51 pm

AFAIK it's just a bunch of parallel copper wires, so it shouldn't matter. I've installed them both ways and they've worked for me.

Post by **Freakaloin** » Fri Mar 25, 2005 3:51 pm

but why?

Post by **lars63** » Fri Mar 25, 2005 4:14 pm

Canis wrote:AFAIK it's just a bunch of parallel copper wires, so it shouldn't matter. I've installed them both ways and they've worked for me.

What he said

Post by **Foo** » Fri Mar 25, 2005 4:50 pm

The distances between sockets on the cord are designed to minimise data corruption and signal propogation problems.

As for it working no matter which way round things go, you're correct, that's because the cables are literally straight end-to-end affairs which as long as they're inserted the right way up on each device, and as long as none of the devices is set to 'cable select', will work.

However as a guideline, you'll get the best performance out of the shortest possible cable, hooked up the recommended way, from the supplier which uses the highest quality materials. Good luck on figuring that out

better cable means less data re-requests due to interference on the cable, which all happens transparently, and we're talking milliseconds each time, I think.

One other issue is if you hook the master up on the middle cable socket, and leave the end socket hanging free, the signal has more trouble between the motherboard and the drive, because of the drain of this free cable length.

More info here: http://www.ata-atapi.com/

Post by **Giraffe }{unter** » Fri Mar 25, 2005 5:24 pm

Thanks Foo reading your link now. :icon32:

Post by **Dr_Watson** » Fri Mar 25, 2005 11:07 pm

the only thing that really matters in a quantifiable sense is that if you have your hard drives set to "CS" aka Cable Select, the drive in the middle plug will be the slave... which might not be how you want it.

Post by **Chupacabra** » Fri Mar 25, 2005 11:33 pm

Freakaloin wrote:but why?

what he said

Post by **Giraffe }{unter** » Sat Mar 26, 2005 1:32 am

Chupacabra wrote:
Freakaloin wrote:but why?
what he said

CRAP I crashed once already with Live TV, looks like it's a nogo

Because I modified my HTPC case to hold the drives with rubber grommets to stop the noise, the only way I can do that was to have the the master and slave 4.5 inches apart

[lvlshot]http://pages.prodigy.net/dpfalandys/Files/mypc/mediacenter/ahanixdrives.jpg[/lvlshot]
[lvlshot]http://pages.prodigy.net/dpfalandys/Files/mypc/mediacenter/ahanixdrives2.jpg[/lvlshot]

Post by **Chupacabra** » Sat Mar 26, 2005 2:17 am

Post by **rep** » Sat Mar 26, 2005 4:09 am

A related question:

Since a SATA channel can support up to 256 devices, why are there so many plugs on motherboards with SATA? You should be able to run SATA-RAID with just one plug, right?

It would most likely take twenty power supplies to run them all, but a 78TB storage array would store a lot of aNiMaTeD gIf89s aNd mIdI mUsIc dOoD!

Post by **Giraffe }{unter** » Sat Mar 26, 2005 4:18 am

It crashed 4 more times in the last few hours, it's been running flawless for months, so I guess its a FACT

Oh well a little more re-arranging and I will make the Media Drive the Master on the secondary and Slave the DVD drive since I don't use it for burning at this time.

Post by **rep** » Sat Mar 26, 2005 4:30 am

That's a fucking huge HTPC, bro.

You shouldn't have bothered with the case, and should have just routed wires to a nearby closet under the carpet. Ugly.

Post by **AmIdYfReAk** » Sat Mar 26, 2005 4:58 am

Hey GH, where did you pick up that case?

Post by **AmIdYfReAk** » Sat Mar 26, 2005 5:07 am

yea, never mind.. i found a seller here in canada... and they are going for... ~350CDN with no PSU..

Post by **Giraffe }{unter** » Sat Mar 26, 2005 6:25 am

do npt buy it, sucks as a htpc case. looksgood, but a bit non functional, and noisey

Post by **Giraffe }{unter** » Sat Mar 26, 2005 3:45 pm

Looks like I might have been wrong about the drive cables. After switching the cables back to normal, and putting the Media drive as the Secondary Master It still crashed on me. :icon33:

I usually never do 2 major things at once, but i didn't think this would mak a difference. I also upgraded to the latest Catalyst drivers for my ATI card and also updated the DVD decoder which is responsible for Live and Recorded Television playback. These two updates were the crashing culprits :icon27: XP MCE is verry picky about everything.

So far it ran Live and recorded TV for about 2 and 1/2 hours with no crashing. I'm going to put it though intense testing tonight when I catch up on the 29 CSI episodes I have recorded

Post by **stocktroll** » Sat Mar 26, 2005 5:03 pm

ok i kinda skimmed through and dont know if i completely understand what you are asking

you want to know if you can put the "slave" cable in the "master" drive and vice versa?
I my basic PC courses havent failed me yet i dont think you should have a problem with that as long as you dont have any of the drive jumpers set on mastering where the cable automatically treats the drives as slave or master