Connecting the DDR and CD-Rom drives

[hellfire45]

So I am building a computer. I've got the motherboard in and most of the cords are plugged into it. I'm at the point where I am connecting my CD-Rom and HDD drives. I have 1 Cd-rom and 2 HDDs. A couple questions.

#1) This HDD literally came in the mail in a plastic bag with no jumpers or tables or instructions or anything. Don't I need a jumper to set the HDD to master or slave?

#2) this MOBO which is the MB GIGABYTE|GA-880GA-UD3H R, one has one IDE port and 1 IDE cable with 3 connectors. How am I supposed to get these 3 devices connected? I don't think that the CD-ROM and the HDD will be close enough to get them both on the same cable...please help. This is the first point where I've really been stumped.

[lowellriggsiam]

First off you should hook up both HDDs to the eide cable, by default if you have no jumpers set it's refered to "eide select" You really do not want to have an HDD and and DVD/CD rom device on the same eide as they will suffer from data colision. Whenever possible use SATA connections.

[Noahtuck]

First thing....
WTF do you mean by

Connecting the DDR and CD-Rom drives

A typo ? Did you mean HDD ?

#1) This HDD literally came in the mail in a plastic bag with no jumpers or tables or instructions or anything.

They all do.... Don't they ?
Tables ??

Don't I need a jumper to set the HDD to master or slave?

Well, it depends.... is it a SATA HDD or a IDE HDD ?

#2) this MOBO which is the MB GIGABYTE|GA-880GA-UD3H R, one has one IDE port and 1 IDE cable with 3 connectors. How am I supposed to get these 3 devices connected?

3 devices ??

1 is connected to the MOBO, 1 is connected to the master drive on the IDE channel, the other end of the cable, the 2nd, which is the middle connection on the cable, is for the slave drive.

I don't think that the CD-ROM and the HDD will be close enough to get them both on the same cable...please help. This is the first point where I've really been stumped.

The first..... i doubt it.....

[hellfire45]

I have Sata and IDE. What do you recommend I do? I've never hooked up SATA before.

[lowellriggsiam]

SATA works faster, and less hassle. The board will make more effecient use of the connected devices as well.

[hellfire45]

Ok maybe I should provide more info. Hopefully one of you guys can just tell me how to hook it up.

I have 1 brand new HDD that has SATA and IDE capabilities.
I have 1 significantly older HDD that has only IDE capabilities but I don't absolutely need this one.
I have 1 pretty old CD-ROM that only has IDE.

I have 1 IDE port on the MOBO and I think 3 SATAs. I also have 2 SATA cables and a few IDE cables.

[hellfire45]

Should I just hook up the new HDD with the SATA and the older CD-rom with the IDE and leave the slave empty?

[hellfire45]

Should I just hook up the new HDD with the SATA and the older CD-rom with the IDE and leave the slave empty?

[redwudz]

Hook up the new HDD to the SATA connector. No jumpers required for SATA. When you install the operating system on the new HDD, it will be partitioned and formatted.

Plug the old HDD into the IDE (PATA) cable at the end and set the jumper to 'Master'. Plug the CD drive into the middle of the cable and set as 'Slave'. Some drives have the jumper settings on them. If not, check with the manufacturer. With most PATA drive cables, the blue end plugs into the motherboard. If the cable doesn't reach, change the positions of the drives in the case so that it does. Some aftermarket PATA cables may be a bit longer and have more space between the connectors.

Personally, I would just get a new SATA DVD burner and get rid of the old CD drive.

[hellfire45]

I would except I don't think I'll use it much . It's really not all that important to me to have a faster drive. It alrady burns DVDs too. but thanks for the advice. I realy needed it to move forward with this.

Question though, is it OK to have a CD-rom drive and a HDD plugged into the same IDE?

[jagabo]

I have 1 brand new HDD that has SATA and IDE capabilities.

I've never seen a drive with both SATA and IDE connectors. You might have a SATA drive with a little adapter card that converts it to IDE, or vice versa. Use whatever the native connector on the drive is. Those little adapters can be problematic.

I have 1 significantly older HDD that has only IDE capabilities but I don't absolutely need this one.
I have 1 pretty old CD-ROM that only has IDE.

Assuming the first drive is SATA I would put that on one of your SATA ports then put the IDE drive and CD-ROM on the IDE port. Make the hard drive the master, the CD-ROM the slave. If you have two IDE ports on the motherboard you can put each IDE device on its own cable, configured as masters.

[lowellriggsiam]

It is not recommended to have them on the same eide, if you attempt to transfer information between drives it may cause data collision such as trying to burn dvds from the HDD, or transfering data from the rom device to the hdd ultimately causing attempts to do so to fail.

[jagabo]

Many motherboards, including the OP's, only have one EIDE connector now.

[DB83]

I do not understand how having a IDE HDD and a IDE burner on the same data cable could result in data collision. The data is only travelling in one direction from each device - read from one, write to the other, get the next data etc etc.

I can understand the reason not to slave a HDD to a burner but that has not been suggested here by any poster.

Another option for the OP is to obtain an adapter for the IDE drive and then connect that to a SATA port.

[redwudz]

I don't know about data collisions, but it's possible a slower device on the PATA bus could affect the speed of a HDD on the same bus. But for the OPs purposes, I doubt it will cause any problems. I've mixed DVD burners and HDDs on the same cable quite a few times without any noticeable problems. In the OPs case, the SATA HDD will be the boot drive and the PATA HDD would just be auxiliary storage.

There are a few DVD burners that will only properly work connected as Master, but easy enough to change cables around if that happens.

[lowellriggsiam]

I had the data collision issue in the past with drives operating on the same eide, but that was years ago.

[neomaine]

I had the data collision issue in the past with drives operating on the same eide, but that was years ago.

You were probably using a 40pin instead of an 80 pin cable and got pushed down to PIO mode.

OP. With a proper 80pin cable you should be just fine having the HDD and CD-ROM on the same cable. Depending on the size of the 'old' HDD, if its 150gb or larger, I'd use that for your OS and program drive and use your SATA for all other storage.

[RabidDog]

No. I'd use the sata drive as your boot drive.. its bound to be both faster and larger. Depending on the size of your other drive and how much you need the space, I'd probably just junk it, or set it aside for future use. You will add another SATA drive at some point, i expect, so keep an eye on the power supply.