Help please...

[RichardMNixon]

I've been slowly assembling parts to build a new computer in January, but in hindsight a bit too late, I may have gotten some incompatible stuff.

Barebone: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16856101466

Optical drive: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16827106988

Hard drive: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....=1055388011277

Looking back, I'm worried that that requires two ATA cables while the barebone only has one, correct? Is there any way to get around this? My friend suggested an enclosure, but I'm hoping I won't have to resort to that. Any help is greatly appreciated, thanks.

[RichardMNixon]

Perhaps it should also be noted that I already bought the drives while that barebone is just what I planned on getting. Lots of my friends have a lot of success with Shuttle, but it seems like all of them have only one ATA. Are there any other good SFF makes out there? Thanks again.

[Cricket]

Are you getting only 1 hard drive and 1 optical drive? You can connect two drives to one IDE channel. The IDE cable that comes with the barebones kit will have connections for two drives. Set the drive priority jumper to CS (cable select) and put the hard drive on the black connector, the optical drive on the grey connector and the blue connector goes to the motherboard.

Cricket

[jayb1234]

That is a pretty good Intel chipset, but I'm not sure what brand the motherboard is, or who makes the power supply. They might be Shuttle proprietary builds.

[RichardMNixon]

Interesting... I've never quite understood the master/slave designation, I just kind of went with it. Are there any negative effects to setting a drive on slave? After doing so, if I wanted to get another hard drive, I could just get a SATA and everything would be ok, correct?
Thanks again.

[Cricket]

Originally Posted by RichardMNixon Are there any negative effects to setting a drive on slave?

You would see the system slow down if you tried to access both drives at the same time or were transferring data from one to the other. But most of us don't do this all the time anyway. There are no other ill effects from this kind of setup.

Originally Posted by RichardMNixon IAfter doing so, if I wanted to get another hard drive, I could just get a SATA and everything would be ok, correct?

Well, if you intended for the SATA HDD to be your boot drive you would have either reinstall Windows on that drive or you can use imaging software to "clone" the contents of the IDE HDD to the SATA HDD. Then you have to set the SATA HDD to the boot drive in the BIOS.

Cricket

[RichardMNixon]

So if I had a disc in the slave optical and was installing something or transferring something to the master hard drive, would that cause it to slow down? That seems like it might be troublesome.
Would there be any advantage in making the SATA the boot drive, or is it just personal preference?

[Cricket]

Originally Posted by RichardMNixon So if I had a disc in the slave optical and was installing something or transferring something to the master hard drive, would that cause it to slow down? That seems like it might be troublesome.

It won't slow down to a crawl, it'll just be slightly slower...nothing drastic.

Originally Posted by RichardMNixon Would there be any advantage in making the SATA the boot drive, or is it just personal preference?

Well...if you have a 10,000 RPM WD Raptor HDD it would boot the system a little faster than a 7200 RPM IDE HDD. And SATA is newer technology...IDE (PATA) is getting pretty old. But yeah, it's up to you.

Cricket

[RichardMNixon]

Alright cool, thanks for all your help.