Trouble with ide connectors

[lolastars]

hi new to forums sorry as this is a very amateur like question but here goes
basically i just bought a Plextor PX-760A Dual Layer DVD±RW and when i opened up pc to install i noticed i only had 3 ide slots.

slot 1 -taken up by the hard drive which has a master spare for another hard drive
slot 2- for floppy drive
slot3- taken up by dvd rom drive (master) and cd rom drive (slave)

i kinda had the idea lol .. that i would need a new cable but i cant see where it would fit

replies much appreciated

 

[Peddant]

Why don`t you make your new drive the "slot3" master and your DVD rom the "slot3" slave,or am I getting confused ?

 

[lolastars]

well what would happen to my cd rom drive at the moment its set to slave

 

[mailpup]

You can connect the new optical drive to slot 1 with the hard drive as master and the DVD writer as slave. However, it's possible there might be performance issues such as the hard drive slowing down. Also, you won't be able to add another hard drive later.

Another solution is to install a PCI IDE controller card if you have an available PCI slot. You can then connect the new optical drive to that IDE controller.

 

[lolastars]

You can connect the new optical drive to slot 1 with the hard drive as master and the DVD writer as slave. However, it's possible there might be performance issues such as the hard drive slowing down. Also, you won't be able to add another hard drive later.

Another solution is to install a PCI IDE controller card if you have an available PCI slot. You can then connect the new optical drive to that IDE controller.

Well i do have a spare pci slot but i was just wondering how do people usually add another optical drive. iam i correct in thinking that one ide cable can attach to two optical drives

 

[CrossFire851]

Well sure, 2 optical drives, 2 hard drives, or one hard drive and one optical drive, for One IDE Cable. What you can do is use the cable thats going to your hard drive and plug it in the the optical drive and the hard drive .



You have two IDE ports so

4 hard drives
4 optical drives

or

4 things max such as 2 hard drives or 2 optical drives

or in your case 1 hard drive
and 3 optical drive (the cd and dvd drives)

 

[mailpup]

How do others add a third optical drive? Crossfire already answered but in my case, my motherboard supports 8 SATA devices so I bought a SATA hard drive which leaves me with two IDE controllers free. I installed two optical drives but I can install two more if I want.