Jumper setting

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how to attach 2 harddick and 3 cd drives in one computer? pls illustrate the primary/secondary and the master and slaves

 

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If they are ALL IDE devices, it can't be done. We also need to know how may IDE ports your mobo has. Many have 2, but some recent ones only have 1.

Every IDE port can handle two devices. To do that you need a ribbon cable with 3 connectors on it - one goes to the mobo port. Usually the two for the actual devices are closer together at the other end. Each connector will have 40 holes in it (or maybe 39 with one hole blocked off), but the ribbon cable should have 80 wires in it. Start counting across - if you get past 20 when you're only ¼ across, you have a 80-conductor cable (the older ones were only 40).

Look carefully at the cable, the labeling on the mobo by the port, and the HDD case labels. The cable should have a red stripe along one edge - that is the Pin #1 edge. Both the mobo and the HD case should have indications of which end of the 40-pin connector has Pin #1. You connect with the red-stripe edge towards the Pin #1 on the connector. Many connectors, in fact, have extra bulges on them or blocked-off pins so that they only connect one way, anyway.

For each IDE channel you can connect two device on its cable, and each MUST be identified. This is done with little black plastic jumpers that plug onto pins on the back of the HDD case. Read the case label. There should be options for Master, Master with Slave Present, Slave, or Cable Select (maybe not all of these). The simplest way is to set ALL the devices as CS (Cable Select) provided they all have that option. Then the identification is done by where they are plugged in - the device on the END of the cable will be the Master, and the middle device will be the Slave. Alternatively, you set one as Master and one as Slave with the jumpers, and again plug the END connector into the Master device. If there is only one device on the cable, it MUST be the Master.

With both HDD and CD-ROM devices, it usually is better to set it up with the HDD as Master and the CD drive as Slave on each channel. That lets you use up to 2 of each type of device. Sometimes, though, this is difficult because of cable design and case spaces. Many cables are made so that, when you plug the end connector into the HDD unit, the cable is going DOWN from there, but the CD ROM mounting bay is ABOVE the HDD bays. If there is enough space between the two cable connectors you may be able to get the middle one all the way up to the CD. If not, you have a couple of choices. One is to buy 80-conductor ribbon cables with lots of space between the two device connectors. (Once I even removed the middle connector and relocated it about 4" further down the cable.) The other option is to rearrange so the two HDD's are on one IDE port/cable, and the two CD-ROM's are on the other. Here you must make sure to set Master and Slave on each channel properly.

We still have a fifth device in your plan. As long as at least one of the five is a SATA device, that's where it connects. All SATA devices go on SATA ports (and note that there is no Master or Slave on SATA ports because each controls only ONE device on its cable), and the remaining IDE devices go to IDE ports. You do not have to have two devices on each IDE port, but IF an IDE port is used, it MUST have a Master device, and MAY have an additional device as Slave.

Windows often will make its own default assignment of drive letters this way: C: is the Primary IDE channel Master, D: is the Secondary Master, E: is the Primary Slave, F: is the Secondary Slave, G: will be on SATA Port 0, etc. If you don't like that, you can change the letter assignments in Disk Manager in Windows XP or VISTA.

When you install the devices, you should boot into the BIOS Setup screens and make sure the ports are all Enabled, Usually the best setting to IDE ports is Auto Detect. For SATA ports a good choice is IDE (or PATA) Emulation - this has the BIOS take control of the SATA device and make Windows think it is dealing with just another plain IDE device which it knows how to do easily. Do NOT choose RAID unless you want it and know how to use it.