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3 CD Drives

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by darts32 1 view

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My First question:

I have a PC that I am trying to install a DVD burner in. Currently I have a DVD drive and a CD Burner on one channel and 2 HD's on the other. From searching around I am finding that IDE can only control 2 drives.
Is therea way for me to get all 3 drives working? Also if possible to use all 3 drives what jumper settings should I use for each drive?

Current setup of the drives are as follows:

IDE Channel 1

HD #1 - Master
HD #2 - Slave

IDE Channel 2

DVD - Master
CD Burner - Cable select

Please help me with this problem.

Thanks in advance.

Jeff

9 replies

by timwalsh

The short answer is no, not with your current equipment. The current design of the IDE bus only allows 2 devices per channel.

The only way to add more IDE devices would be to add an additional IDE controller into your system.

by dmiles

No,you cannot accomplish this with the current setup,you will need to purchase a controller card to install the other drive,jumper settings will be Master/Slave-Hard drive to CD

by thechas

As in answer 1, you need to add an additional IDE controller to your system.

Here is a link to a page at www.newegg.com listing IDE controllers from High Point Technologies.

http://tinyurl.com/ifog

I would move your hard drives to the new controller.
You will need to change the boot sequence in BIOS settings to make SCSI the first choice.
Install the DVD burner jumpered as the slave drive on the primary controller from the motherboard.
I have had boot issues on a few motherboards when a CD drive is connected as Primary master.

Chas

by thechas

A side note:

Make sure that you have enough power supply for all your hardware.

AMD K6 / Pentium 3 / Celeron: 350 Watts

AMD socket A / Pentium 4: 450 Watts or more.

Chas

by darts32

Thanks for the link and the jumpers and bios settings. Great side note on the power supply. I forgot about that and since my current PS is maxed it would of not been pretty.

Thanks!

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