Hooking up 4 optical drives to a motherboard with 2 IDE inputs

Martingale00

Martingale00

New Member
Hello all, I am about to hook up four DVD-ROM drives to my rig (for games). I'm guessing I just take an IDE strap and go into IDE input #1 and another IDE strap and go into input #2. Is this correct? If so how do I set the jumpers? Do I set the first drive on each strap to master and the second drive on the strap to slave? Or do I set the top one to master and the rest to cable select?

I believe the first IDE input is for those old IDE hard drives and if you're using SATA you plug your optical drives into the second IDE slot, does that sound right? So how do I take that into account with what two drives I put on top in my case....do I want those into IDE input one or two? Thanks...sorry for all of the questions.
 
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Styrak

New Member
Optical drives are IDE drives. Not SATA (well some new ones coming out are), and SATA cables do not plug into IDE ports. You are correct, you need IDE ribbon cables. As for which settings you need to use....
The drives at the end of the cables need to be set to master, and the drives in the middle of the cables need to be set to slave.
But I ask you, why the hell are you using 4 optical drives?
 
M

midian

New Member
Styrak said:
Optical drives are IDE drives. Not SATA (well some new ones coming out are), and SATA cables do not plug into IDE ports. You are correct, you need IDE ribbon cables. As for which settings you need to use....
The drives at the end of the cables need to be set to master, and the drives in the middle of the cables need to be set to slave.
But I ask you, why the hell are you using 4 optical drives?
Click to expand...


Same here, unless you need to burn more then one cd at a time or somthing like a job needs you to have four, you should be alright with two, but if you want four it wont hurt, well the way you said is right, if it dont work then you can always put them on cable select on the second ribbion
 
Martingale00

Martingale00

New Member
Styrak, I know the optical drives are IDE and not SATA. Maybe I should word my question better. Even when you're using an SATA hard drive I believe you usually use the second IDE input for the optical drives, isn't that right? I remember when I was building this thing the motherboard book said to plug your hard drive into SATA #1 or IDE #1 depending on what you have and then your optical drives into IDE #2 regardless of what hard drive you have. Does the IDE input #1 and #2 have any impact on what set of optical drives I should put at the top of the case or does it not matter.

:D As for why I need 4 drives is that I want to have 3 games loaded and still have an empty drive to utilize. Because of all of the piracy stuff most of these games want you to have the CD in the drive for the game to play and I hate putting CD's in and out all day...I just want to click the icon on the desk top and having the CD already loaded in the drive for 3 or 4 games.

sup2jzgte, that's a cool piece but I do have enough IDE inputs on my motherboard I think (2). I just can't figure out how to configure the jumpers I guess is my biggest question at this point.
 
ceewi1

ceewi1

VIP Member
Either set all 4 drives on Cable Select, or set one drive on each IDE cable to Master and the other to Slave.

It should work without issues.
 
Martingale00

Martingale00

New Member
Yeah I don't need 4 disks for one single game, I want to load 4 disks for 4 different games so I don't have to swap the disks. I can keep 3 or 4 disks loaded and click the desktop icons to boot the game. The computer is not at a desk and disks seem to end up all over the place.

I got all 4 in and they're all working fine. I had to re-rout all of my 4-pins but that was okay. Since the first two were already on master/slave and set the second set to master/slave as well and it worked fine. Thanks for all of your suggestions.
 
S

Styrak

New Member
Martingale00 said:
Styrak, I know the optical drives are IDE and not SATA. Maybe I should word my question better. Even when you're using an SATA hard drive I believe you usually use the second IDE input for the optical drives, isn't that right? I remember when I was building this thing the motherboard book said to plug your hard drive into SATA #1 or IDE #1 depending on what you have and then your optical drives into IDE #2 regardless of what hard drive you have. Does the IDE input #1 and #2 have any impact on what set of optical drives I should put at the top of the case or does it not matter.
Click to expand...

It does not matter what IDE channel you are using, as long as you have the jumpers set right.
:D
 
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