Originally posted by joeacid:
Hi,
Here's my case:
I have 3 HDD all with alotsa things inside.
1 SATA, 2 IDE.
Only the SATA has OS, the other 2 IDE is only full of datas w/o OS.
I have been using SATA HDD as my OS + 1 other IDE(I change them frequently), but i think changing them like this is going to damage the cable very soon, so i decide to connect all 3 together.
My problem is:
I always set my SATA HDD to boot up 1st, and then the other 2 IDE HDD.
CASE 1: When i put cable select for both the IDE HDD, i can detect all the 3 HDD in my BIOS but my PC hang at the part where it detected the 3rd HDD.
CASE 2: When i put Master on 1 of the IDE and slave for another, the PC will boot up with the IDE Master(Which has no OS) i set with my jumper. Of course there's no window for it to boot up, so it just stopped somewhere. [This just happen regardlessly even when i select in BIOS to boot up the SATA HDD 1st.
Joe,
you have 1 sata - with OS and data
you have 1(1st) IDE - with OS and data
you have 2nd IDE - without OS and with data
no changes to your sata leave it as it is.
set 1st IDE hdd jumper to master and use the MASTER connector of your ribbon cable to connect to the motherboard IDE conn.
set 2nd IDE hdd jumper to slave and use the SLAVE connector of your ribbon cable to connect to the motherboard IDE conn.
like this you can connect any optical drives to either of the 2 IDE channels as master or slave no problem with that.
if you have 2 IDE connectors in your motherboard to avoid confusion use one channel on each IDE drive.
select the appropriate drive you want to boot up at the BIOS each time you want to switch OS/hdd instead of having to plug/ unplug cables.
if your board has JBOD better just use it on the 2 IDE drives to make them appear as one but that's another story.