IDE input

dori2o

My motherboard only has 2 ide ports, 1 for the DVD/IDE HDD and 1 for the floppy. Is it possible to use the one for the floppy to input the HDD?

Fonz_2

dori2o wrote: »

My motherboard only has 2 ide ports, 1 for the DVD/IDE HDD and 1 for the floppy. Is it possible to use the one for the floppy to input the HDD?

The floppy won't be IDE - it will just look similar.

Nilrem

Whilst the floppy drive controller* won't work with a HDD, if the machine has any free PCI slots it should be cheap and easy to add either an IDE card, or a SATA card to let it use more drives (SATA hard drives are now generally much cheaper in terms of cost per GB, and easier to find).

The only complications might be if you are using an older OS (I'm not sure how good SATA support is with Windows 98), or wish to boot from the drive in which case you may need a bootable drive controller, and depending on the OS a floppy drive to install the drivers.



*Although depending on the actual controller they can be surprisingly versitile (at one point they were able to deal with removable drives of up to 100mb!

el_gringo_3

I'm assuming you realise that you can put 2 devices on one IDE and you are asking about a second hard drive? If you don't,just set the jumers on the back of the dvd to master and the hard drive to slave, the stick the 'middle' connection of the IDE cable into the back of the HDD.

-TangleFoot-

el_gringo wrote: »

just set the jumers on the back of the dvd to master and the hard drive to slave

Wouldn't it be better the other way around?

el_gringo_3

-TangleFoot- wrote: »

Wouldn't it be better the other way around?

Don't think i've ever noticed much difference - am just suggesting that way as most people have their dvd drive at the top of the case and HDD's below it!

RobTang

You shouldn't really run DVD drives and hard drives on the same cable really. as it will force the hdd to run at 1/3 of its possible transfer speed.

and it doesn't actually matter what plug you use for the master drive (even if a cable is labeled as such)

-TangleFoot-

I was referring to the jumpers, not the drives themselves. I am also well aware of the limitations of having both devices on the same cable.

If however the motherboard has just the one IDE header, there won't be any room for any extra drives anyway.

mikey72

RobTang wrote: »

You shouldn't really run DVD drives and hard drives on the same cable really. as it will force the hdd to run at 1/3 of its possible transfer speed.

and it doesn't actually matter what plug you use for the master drive (even if a cable is labeled as such)

This used to be true, modern IDE will vary transfer speed to suit the drive being used.

-TangleFoot-

mikey72 wrote: »

modern IDE will vary transfer speed to suit the drive being used.

Really? When did this happen?

mikey72

I don't know when, but my Asus which must be 5 years old, runs the HDD at ATA100, and the DVD at ATA33, with a fast IDE cable.
I can't find a date, but
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT_Attachment
covers it briefly, about 2/3 way down under "lowest speed", and there are many other articles if you google it, but no real dates. Probably really when ATA100 came into being, and bios supported it properly.