Can I get an 'extension'cable for an IDE ribbon??

[pleavy]

Hi I've got a 3.5" hard drive and there is space in my machine to fit it under the floppy in the 3.5" drive bay. However, the old hard drive (which I'm keeping in there) is next door in the 5.25" rack. So the second plug on it's IDE cable won't reach to the 3.5" bay..... Can I buy something to link the IDE plug to the new drive???? This really would sort my situation out as I don't have a spare slot on the 5.25" rack and to make space I'll have to buy a CDRW/DVD combo drive and I'd rather not have to.

Thanks,

Patrick

[flawedreality5]

I ordered some round IDE cables a few weeks ago from www.frozencpu.com for like $7 each. They have different sizes (10" 18" 24"?). I'd just get one of them since they're so cheap.

[Cricket]

Originally Posted by pleavy Hi I've got a 3.5" hard drive and there is space in my machine to fit it under the floppy in the 3.5" drive bay. However, the old hard drive (which I'm keeping in there) is next door in the 5.25" rack. So the second plug on it's IDE cable won't reach to the 3.5" bay..... Can I buy something to link the IDE plug to the new drive????

Nope.

No more space under the floppy drive?

Cricket

[jayb1234]

Just put the hard drives in adjacent 3.5 inch bays and the cable will reach them both.

[TwoRails]

The problem with getting a longer cable is that they are normally just longer overall, meaning the spacing between the drive connectors isn't much, if any longer. One other option is to slave your optical drive(s) to one of the hard drives. That way, the drive up top could share it's connector with the optical.

[Cricket]

jayb1234: According to this thread pleavy is using a desktop case, not a tower and has no more open 3.5" drives bays available.

Cricket

[jayb1234]

Well I guess that my suggestion won't do much good then.

I did find this place that will custom build a cable to your specifications.

They list a 40 pin male/female extension cable. They show 80 pin with custom placement too.

[pleavy]

Originally Posted by jayb1234 Just put the hard drives in adjacent 3.5 inch bays and the cable will reach them both.

unfortunately the machine I bought is specifically designed for recording music and so the orginal hard drive is in a big plastic case to make it quieter and mounted in the 5.25" bay... so it pretty much has to stay there... d'oh! I have space in the 3.5" bay but like i said the problem is i can't thread an IDE cable between the bays....

aaaaaaaarrrhhh!!!

[glc]

Why don't you just buy a DVD burner? They are only 40 bucks now. A custom made cable is gonna cost you close to that. Are you sure you can't rearrange your drive/cable assignments? As long as the boot drive is primary master, it doesn't really matter what the other drives are.