Search
Sign in with
Sign up | Sign in

Not sure about cable for DVD and CD drives

Last response: in Motherboards
Share

I have an Asus P5LD2 Deluxe mobo. I want to install a DVD+/-RW drive and a CD-RW/DVD-ROM Combo drive. Would these be connected to the blue PRI_IDE connctor on the mobo?

Also, the mobo came with 1 CD-ROM cable (3 black connectors), and 2 HDD cables (one blue connector, one grey connector, and one black connector at the other end). However, the description in the mobo manual for connecting to the PRI_IDE connector says that an Ultra 100/66 signal cable is to be used, and that this cable has three connectors that are blue, grey and black. But the cable with blue, grey and black connectors is identified as HDD cables. I don't want to connect hard discs. I want to connect burners.

Am I missing something here?

Any clarification would be greatly appreciated.

More about : cable dvd drives

Register or log in to remove

Yes, that is what it means.

If you are using SATA hard disks, and plan to do disk to disk burning, then you might want to connect the 2 optical drives to a seperate controller (one on primary and the other on secondary). But, in practice it probably won't make much difference.

Also, there is really no reason I can think of to have a DVD burner and a CD burner. The DVD burner will burn CD's. If you do intend to burn disk to disk, then of course you'll need 2 devices and the cost of a CD burner compared to a regular CD reader is negligable, so you may as well get a burner. But, if you don't intend to copy disk to disk, then all you really need is the DVD burner.

In one sense the colors do matter. Usually if an IDE cable is color coded it means that it is a cable select cable. With a cable select cable the placement of the drives on the cable determines which drive is master and which is slave - in a sense the cable selects (hence the name). Typically the blue connector goes to the controller, the gray connector in the middle goes to the slave drive and the black one on the end goes to the master. For it to work correctly with two drives the jumpers on both drives need to be set to CS (cable select).

40 conductor cables do not support CS as far as I know, but any 80 conductor cable will.

But anyway, the colors really don't matter (the color coding) unless you really want one drive or the other to be master or slave, then either set the jumpers, or put the master on the end of the cable.

So I guess what I'm saying is you are right, but for most intents and purposes it really doesn't matter....Well, the blue one connects to the motherboard....oh, forget it. :wink:
Register or log in to remove
 
Ask the community
Read discussions in other Motherboards categories
!