Just a small question about IDE slave/master.

[NinjaBachelorParty]

Hi,

Just finishing on my first build, on a motherboard that has one IDE channel. I remembered i have an IDE HDD sitting around somewhere, although not so big it would be more space, can i assign this as a slave and my optical drive as master and have them on the same IDE channel? Or does it only work if it is 2 optical drives together, or 2 HDDs together? Thanks.

[blue60007]

Do you have a 80 wire cable (vs a 40 wire cable)? That would work the best. I don't see why it won't work...as long as the cable can reach the optical and the hard drive (that'd be my biggest concern). You'd want to use Cable Select (CS) with an 80 wire cable. The plug the cable is plugged into determines master/slave. It should be labeled on the cable which is which.

[NinjaBachelorParty]

Hi, thanks for the reply. I wasn't sure because in a review of my board someone mentioned that an optical and a PATA IDE HDD wouldnt work on the same channel, didnt know if this was the case for all IDE HDDs. My cable is more than long enough though, plus the front of my case is modular so i can move everything around for the best fit. Thanks again!

[freakitchen]

You might also consider purchasing a housing to turn that IDE drive into an external drive that connects via USB2. It's a great solution for creating a backup drive, and I'd personally prefer it to having a HD and Optical drive on the same cable.

FK

[libertytech]

pls help!!

my system: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 1.80GHz
Version: x86 Family 15 Model 1 Stepping 2
Speed: 1817 MHz

Memory (RAM)
Capacity: 512 MB

i have been using this copmtr for about 5months without any problem for graphic job. but since yesterday, it would just hang at times and sometimes it would refused to save instead it would complain of low virtual memory or low memory. the memory size is 256mb and the hard disk is about 120gilg which has 2 volumes. the primary volume is about 75gig and when i checked the remaining space on the primary volume, it has 13% free space left as at the time it complained of low memory. i removed some files and have about 19% free space to enable me run defrag after defragment, it stopped complaining but i'm still not comfortable with the situation. please what else can i do?

[freakitchen]

Libertytech: Please do not Hijack this thread. Post your question in a new thread in the 'General Hardware' forum. Thankyou.

**moderator**

[blue60007]

Originally Posted by Freakitchen I'd personally prefer it to having a HD and Optical drive on the same cable.

Yeah...so would I, but using the same channel does the trick for now. Putting them on the same cable is probably not the best solution if you want to use the drive a lot though. All depends on what you want to do with the drive... The external drive is a great idea for backing up your important files.

You've also got the option of a IDE controller card, but I'd only opt for that if I was using the drive for installing games or something that requires fast speed, but it doesn't sound like the drive is going to be useful for that.