Quick question about IDE Cables

I'm gonna buy some round IDE/floppy cables to go with my new system rather than the ribbon ones that come with the motherboard. On NewEgg I'm looking at the Vantec ones and some have "2-connector" and some have "3-connector". I know what they look like and all but what is the use for the 3 connector? I'm going to have a CDRW drive, a DVD drive, a floppy drive, and of course a HD... if any of that matters. I was just going to get the 2 connector cause I don't see the use of the 3 connector but I want to be sure before I go order them.

I believe that you would want the three connector.

what it means is the cable has three connectors on it, one to go the mobo, and two to go to devices. If you got the two connector, you could only put one device on each cable.

Does "doubling up" the devices on one cable have any effect on performance? I'm thinking I might put a 3-connector for the DVD and the CDRW, and just have a 2-connector for the HDD.

Gregory_WE said:

Does "doubling up" the devices on one cable have any effect on performance? I'm thinking I might put a 3-connector for the DVD and the CDRW, and just have a 2-connector for the HDD.

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Yes this is what you want to do.

You might have noticed some slowdowns if you put the CD-ROM and the HD on the same channel.

I have my burner and DVD on the same cable, and I can copy "on-the-fly" So you'll be just fine.

Putting a burner on the same cable as another optical drive will result in slower burning and a higher risk of producing a coaster.

Penguin4x4 said:

Putting a burner on the same cable as another optical drive will result in slower burning and a higher risk of producing a coaster.

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Would this be true if the other optical drive isn't running? Right now, I have my burner and my DVDROM on the same IDE cable. I did notice some problems with my DVDROM lately, but I'm not sure if it's related to the cable organization or not. From what I've read, it's best to have the following setup:

IDE 1 Master = 1st most used
IDE 1 Slave = 4th most used
IDE 2 Master = 2nd most used
IDE 2 Slave = 3rd most used

In my setup, this translates to:

IDE 1 Master = HD
IDE 1 Slave =
IDE 2 Master = burner
IDE 2 Slave = DVDROM

I haven't noticed any problems with burning, but sometimes I get "I/O errors" when reading; I have no idea what this is.

I have that exact same setup... and everthing is working great. I"ve even burned from the hard drive to a cd, and copied from the DVD to the Hard drive at the same time! That's a lot of traffic, but everything worked.

esit said:

Would this be true if the other optical drive isn't running?

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No, if only one device is using the bandwidth, than performance would not be affected. The potential problem with having a CDROM and a burner on the same channel occurs when you are copying a cd in the drive to the burner. In this case, the bandwidth is being used by both devices, so performance is decreased. There is also the possibility of a buffer underrun, in which case the cd will probably be unusable. However, I have a DVD-ROM and a burner on the same channel, and have never had any problems, even when copying, so I think you'll probably be ok.

Buy the Coolermaster round yellow floppy and the blue 18inch ATA133 for the hard drive and the Vantec for your DVD or CDROM drive ... The Coolermasters are way better than the Vantec's ... they have the pull tabs and seems to be constructed in a much more precise manner ... JUst my humble opionion