If there are two hard drives can the jumper settings on hard drives affect the s

G

Guest

Guest
Hello,
I have a SATA hard drive in my computer. I recently installed another hard drive for storage. This new hard drive and my DVD burner is sharing an IDE cable. I have noticed since the upgrade my PC is running slower at times when i try to access programs or even to go into "my computer". How can this be corrected.....Thanks!
 

Paperdoc

Polypheme
Ambassador
When you have two devices sharing an IDE cable and port, you MUST set the jumpers correctly on both devices. In your case, it appears you HAD a DVD unit alone on the IDE cable and then added a new HDD to that, so a change might be necessary on both units. Do NOT change anything on your old SATA HDD.

When two devices share an IDE port and cable, one MUST be the port Master, and one MUST be the Slave. This has NOTHING to do with the whole machine and all its other devices - Master and Slave pertain only to the one shared port.

First, the cable. It has three connectors. The BLUE one on one end goes to the mobo port. The BLACK one on the other end goes to the Master device. The GREY one in the middle goes to the Slave.

Now, the jumpers. There are two options for how to set. The more common one is to be explicit. Set one device's jumpers to the Master position, according to the diagram on the HDD unit itself. Set the other device's jumpers to Slave according to its diagram. Now plug in as above.

The alternative is to set BOTH devices' jumpers to "CS" for "Cable Select". Then the one plugged into the Black end connector WILL be the Master, and the other the Slave.

It is advised (may not be necessary with relatively new equipment as you have) that, in your combination, the HDD should be set as Master, and the optical drive as Slave.

If you don't have these all right, your BIOS may be having trouble communicating with the units on the IDE port, requiring re-try's and error corrections all the time.