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I'm hooking up two ATA66 hard drives in an old Gateway computer. Putting
them on the primary IDE channel (of course) but since the computer is so
old, I'm not going to use cable select on either of them. I know how to
jumper the drives properly for master and slave, but does it matter
where they go on the cable? I.e. should the master be on the end or in
the middle? Or, since I'm not using cable select, does it make any
difference at all where the drives go on the cable?

TIA for any help and replies.

--
Regards from John Corliss

"John Corliss" <> wrote in message
news:...
> I'm hooking up two ATA66 hard drives in an old Gateway computer. Putting
> them on the primary IDE channel (of course) but since the computer is so
> old, I'm not going to use cable select on either of them. I know how to
> jumper the drives properly for master and slave, but does it matter where
> they go on the cable? I.e. should the master be on the end or in the
> middle? Or, since I'm not using cable select, does it make any difference
> at all where the drives go on the cable?
>
> TIA for any help and replies.
>

All that matters is one is master, the other a slave.
If for some reason the thing doesn't work, reverse the drives on the cables.
Not the pins.

John Corliss <> wrote:

>I'm hooking up two ATA66 hard drives in an old Gateway computer. Putting
>them on the primary IDE channel (of course) but since the computer is so
>old, I'm not going to use cable select on either of them. I know how to
>jumper the drives properly for master and slave, but does it matter
>where they go on the cable? I.e. should the master be on the end or in
>the middle? Or, since I'm not using cable select, does it make any
>difference at all where the drives go on the cable?

One jumper'd Master on the End of the cable, One jumper''d as Slave in
the middle of the cable.



--
1000 virtual cars racing at the same time - Trackmania Sunrise
http://www.gametrailers.com/umwatcher.php?id=12321

John Corliss <> wrote:

>I'm hooking up two ATA66 hard drives in an old Gateway computer. Putting
>them on the primary IDE channel (of course) but since the computer is so
>old, I'm not going to use cable select on either of them. I know how to
>jumper the drives properly for master and slave, but does it matter
>where they go on the cable? I.e. should the master be on the end or in
>the middle? Or, since I'm not using cable select, does it make any
>difference at all where the drives go on the cable?
>
>TIA for any help and replies.

If the drives are properly jumpered then cable position does not
matter. I have, on occasion, configured computers with a hard drive
at either end of the IDE cable and with the middle connector plugged
into the motherboard. No problems.

A couple of caveats:
1. Some hard drives use different jumper positions for "master drive
with slave present" and for "stand alone master drive" so you need to
double-check the jumper specifications for the master drive when you
add a slave.
2. Sometimes two drives will just not work together as master &
slave. This is most likely to be encountered when the two drives are
from different manufacturers and where the drive manufacturing dates
are more than 3 years apart. The last time I encountered this it was
with a new Western Digital drive as master and a 5 year old Maxtor as
slave, but it sometimes happens with other brands as well.

Good luck

Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP (1997 - 2006)
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca
Syberfix Remote Computer Repair

"Anyone who thinks that they are too small to make a difference
has never been in bed with a mosquito."

Ron Martell enlightened us 24hoursupport.helpdesk-(ab)users with:

.....
> If the drives are properly jumpered then cable position does not
> matter. I have, on occasion, configured computers with a hard drive
> at either end of the IDE cable and with the middle connector plugged
> into the motherboard. No problems.
>
Uhm. That looks like asking for trouble.
Well, on some really old computer, without UDMA or at least <=UDMA33,
you may be lucky with such a setup.
BUT with UDMA100 or 133, you will get reflections, resulting in reduced
transfer rates, maybe auto-shutoff of (u)dma features or even data
corruption.
Never let a 80wire PATA cable tail hang loose - the end connector must
always have a drive attached first, _then_ the middle connector.
On some occasion I even noticed corruption resulting in "ntldr missing"
or the system part of registry hive corrupted, just when master was
attached to middle and slave at the end, with udma133. After swapping,
everything went smooth ...

> A couple of caveats:
> 1. Some hard drives use different jumper positions for "master drive
> with slave present" and for "stand alone master drive" so you need to
> double-check the jumper specifications for the master drive when you
> add a slave.
> 2. Sometimes two drives will just not work together as master &
> slave. This is most likely to be encountered when the two drives are
> from different manufacturers and where the drive manufacturing dates
> are more than 3 years apart. The last time I encountered this it was
> with a new Western Digital drive as master and a 5 year old Maxtor as
> slave, but it sometimes happens with other brands as well.
>
Good points
--
vista policy violation: Microsoft optical mouse found penguin patterns
on mousepad. Partition scan in progress to remove offending
incompatible products. Reactivate MS software.
Linux 2.6.17-mm1,Xorg7.1/nvidia [LinuxCounter#295241,ICQ#4918962]

John Corliss wrote:
> I'm hooking up two ATA66 hard drives in an old Gateway computer. Putting
> them on the primary IDE channel (of course) but since the computer is so
> old, I'm not going to use cable select on either of them. I know how to
> jumper the drives properly for master and slave, but does it matter
> where they go on the cable? I.e. should the master be on the end or in
> the middle? Or, since I'm not using cable select, does it make any
> difference at all where the drives go on the cable?
>
> TIA for any help and replies.

Thanks to all who answered. I really appreciate your taking the time to
answer.

Right after I posted my question, I looked in the installation manual
for one of the drives and found out that Pennywise was right. And
everything worked fine.

One of the drives was formatted as NTFS and had XP Home on it, and the
other drive has W98. The second drive is the one I'll use because the
people I'm doing this for have a license for that copy. Also, I'd
promised the guy who donated the drive that I'd format it.

I ran FDISK and then formatted the first drive. Unfortunately, I forgot
to delete the NTFS partition and for some reason, was able to get a 1.8
gb FAT32 partition on the drive, which fooled me into thinking I'd done
it correctly. After I got everything running and discovered the error,
it was back to the drawing board with FDISK.

The second time I removed all partitions and finally was able to get the
correct drive capacity when I formatted it.

DOOH!

My thanks again to everybody who replied.

And I look forward to the day when all these ATA based computers go away
to be replaced by SATA.

--
Regards from John Corliss