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General discussion

3rd CD Drive

Sep 15, 2004 10:00AM PDT

Hi - I already have a DVD Burner and a CD Burner installed in my PC (running Win XP Pro) and happen to have been given a new CD Player that I thought I might as well add, purely for the sake of having a spare (eg to keep a game CD or a music CD I don't want to regularly keep changing over)

Anyway, what is the best way to do this please? I understand about slave/master jumper settings and IDE cables, but at a quick glance I'm not entirely sure there is space to do it anyway...

Discussion is locked

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Re: 3rd CD Drive
Sep 15, 2004 10:23AM PDT

"I understand about slave/master jumper settings and IDE cables, but at a quick glance I'm not entirely sure there is space to do it anyway..."

With all due respect, slave/master isn't used if you put said drive on an 80 conductor cable. You use cable select.

I used an external USB 2.0 enclosure for my DVD recorder since I wanted to take it with me on the road.

Bob

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Re: 3rd CD Drive
Sep 17, 2004 3:04AM PDT

> With all due respect, slave/master isn't used if
> you put said drive on an 80 conductor cable. You
> use cable select.

Sure master/slave is used, or at least can be. The fact that you're using 80 conductor cable shouldn't enter into it. It's still IDE/ATAPI.

Personally, I avoid using cable select and when I find a drive using it, I'll usually change it to master/slave (unless for some reason I _really_ think it just doesn't matter). I've had problems using cable select in the past (years ago, under Unix) and since then I just always use master/slave because it's dependable. It always works, at least in my experience. Cable select was presumably added to try to simplify things for the less technical user and, at least initially, didn't always work that well.

I don't recall ever encountering, or hearing about, a situation where master/slave didn't work but cable select did. If you know of any such situations, I'd be interested in hearing about it.

Just my .02.

James

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It didn't work here....
Sep 17, 2004 3:17AM PDT

"I don't recall ever encountering, or hearing about, a situation where master/slave didn't work but cable select did. If you know of any such situations, I'd be interested in hearing about it."

I've seen it too often. The owner usually digs in their heels shouting "It should work" (with master slave jumpers) and we have to just let them discover that for their devices... it didn't.

Best of luck,

Bob

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Re: It didn't work here....
Sep 17, 2004 4:53AM PDT

Interesting. I've worked on a lot of systems over the years and master/slave has never given me any problems. Not to doubt you, but I can't help thinking there was something else wrong (mis-jumpered, mis-connected cables, etc.). It's just hard, when it goes against all of my experience. Oh well. As long as it works. That's what really matters in the end. Me, I'll keep using master/slave until it gives me a problem. Happy

James

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Re: 3rd CD Drive
Sep 15, 2004 1:37PM PDT

well if you only have one hard drive you ought to be able to do it, unless your case is super small. need 3 5" openings.

set jumpers on all drives to cable select. to be tidy, be sure to make your hard drive the primary master, altho it will work on any connection I think.

biggest problem is length of the IDE cables, and putting the drives close enough together and close enough to mobo so the ide cable will reach everything. I try to space drives far apart for cooling purposes, empty bay between each, but that is restricted by the cable length and where the plugs are on the cable.

--fj