Problem with IDE Connectivity

**Renderman21** · 09-02-2009

hi there........

I was cleaning my Pc cabinet where i saw one of the connections to my IDE cable has suddenly stopped functioning. It seems like only 1 device can be connected at a time, what would be the reason to happen all of a sudden?
Please help me in finding some solution on it............

Any help would be greatly appreciated..............

**Amd Athlon** · 09-02-2009

Follow these steps properly in order to connect and install IDE cables:.

Select The Proper IDE Cable

Selecting an IDE cable is a matter of personal preference and style because there is just one IDE interface for connecting storage drives to the motherboard. That standard is ATA (Advanced Technology Attachment), which has been used for making PC connections for the last decade. ATA comes in various interface speeds, such as ATA66, ATA100, and ATA133. The speed of the drive you are using determines which ATA interface you'll need, but the good news is that most IDE cables are backward-compatible with older drives. So, as long as you use an IDE cable that supports ATA133, you can still use it for older drives that support any ATA speed.

However, you may want to consider other IDE cabling options. For the past several years, PC builders have used flat, gray ribbon cables to connect motherboards to storage devices. These cables use the ATA interface described above, which transmit data at about 100MBps (megabytes per second). That speed is more than adequate for even the faster 10,000rpm drives available today, so it's not an issue of data throughput. Instead, the problem with ribbon-style IDE cables is that they take up a lot of room inside your PC case and can inhibit airflow, which means your PC will run hotter and require more fans.

A cooler option is the rounded-style IDE cables, which still use the same ATA interface as IDE ribbon cables but don't block airflow inside your case as much. Rounded cables also look a bit less "techie" and help reduce case clutter. One great source for rounded-style IDE cables is XoXide.com, where you can select from all kinds of cables in various colors and styles. There are even rounded IDE cables that emit a soft UV glow. Rounded cables are typically available in 12-inch, 18-inch, 24-inch, or 36-inch lengths.

There's also a third cable option for hard drive connections. SATA (Serial ATA) cables (which do not use the IDE interface at all) tend to keep your case cooler than even the rounded-style IDE cables. SATA cables are thinner and are easier to bend around internal case components such as fans and video cards. Also, SATA transfers data at 150MBps, so there's a fairly significant speed improvement in terms of data transfer. The only catch is that you'll need to use a hard drive and motherboard that supports Serial ATA. We're focused on installing IDE cables for this project, but Serial ATA is another interface option you can use for a speed boost and extra case cooling. Of course, as with any new hardware component, SATA drives and cables are more expensive, at least for now.

Motherboard Connections

The process for connecting both rounded and ribbon IDE cables is the same. IDE cables snap into the motherboard in only one direction, using the blue end of the cable. The cable plugs into the IDE interface controller on the motherboard, which is typically located on the outer edge of the board near the drives and marked IDE 1 and IDE 2 (consult your motherboard or PC manual for the specific locations of your system's IDE connectors). There's also a smaller floppy drive connector in this same area.

You can connect one IDE cable to the primary IDE1 interface on the motherboard and use that cable for the hard drive or optical drive and then use a separate cable that you plug into the IDE2 interface for additional drives. You could attach both drives to one cable, but that can hurt the drives' performance, so we recommend using two cables. However, using just one cable does mean less clutter inside your case, which can keep components cooler.

Position the cable so that the raised notch on the cable's connector is aligned with a corresponding notch opening in the IDE interface controller. After you press the IDE cable into the motherboard, inspect the IDE connector to make sure it's flush with the motherboard port. A loose connection can cause problems with the drive or even cause the motherboard and drives to fail entirely.

Drive Connections

Next, connect the other end of the IDE cable to the hard drive or optical drive. If you are using one IDE cable for both the hard drive and optical cable, first attach the cable to the hard drive and then use the second connector for the optical drive. Once again, check the IDE connector and make sure the notch opening on the drive connector aligns with the raised notch on the IDE cable connector. If you are using two cables, one for the hard drive and one for the optical drive, repeat the same process for each drive.

If you are using more than one optical drive, you can use one IDE cable for both drives. We won't address drive jumper settings here for master and slave, but you should know that two drives connected individually to IDE1 and IDE2 can both be set as master. If you use one IDE cable, you'll need to set one drive as master and one as slave.

Test The Connections

After you make the final connections to the drives, it's time to test the IDE connections. Connect the power cord to the power supply and turn on the PC. If you hear the hard drive spin and see that the CD or DVD optical drive powers up, you know everything is working properly.

**gygabite** · 09-02-2009

Read this and you will have a solution for your problem:

Configuration Using Cable Select

An alternative to the standard master/slave jumpering system used in the vast majority of PCs is the use of the cable select system. As the name implies, with this system the cable--or more correctly, which connector on the cable a device is attached to--determines which device is master and which is slave. The goal of cable select is to eliminate having to set master and slave jumpers, allowing simpler configuration.

To use cable select, both devices on the channel are set to the "cable select" (CS) setting, usually by a special jumper. Then, a special cable is used. This cable is very similar in most respects to the regular IDE/ATA cable, except for the CSEL signal. CSEL is carried on wire #28 of the standard IDE/ATA cable, and is grounded at the host's connector (the one that attaches to the motherboard or controller). On a cable select cable, one of the connectors (the "master connector") has pin #28 connected through to the cable, but the other (the "slave connector") has an open circuit on that pin (no connection). When both drives on the channel are set cable select, here's what happens:
Master: The device that is attached to the "master connector" sees the CSEL signal as grounded, because its connector has pin #28 attached to the cable, and the host's connector has that signal grounded. Seeing the "zero value" (grounded), the device sets itself to operate as master (device 0).
Slave: The drive that is attached to the "slave connector" does not see the CSEL signal as grounded, because its connector is not attached to the CSEL signal on the cable. Seeing this "no connection", the device configures itself as a slave.

If you switch the devices between the two connectors, they swap configuration, the master becoming the slave and vice-versa. Not a very complicated arrangement, and a good idea, it would seem. In fact, if cable select had actually caught on, it would have been great. The problem is that it has never been widely used, and this lack of universality has made cable select unattractive, which is a bit of a chicken and egg situation. Since cable select was never accepted in the industry, most drives come, by default, with the drive jumpered as a master or single drive. This means that to enable cable select, you have to change a jumper anyway, which obviously negates some of the advantage.

But the biggest reason why cable select never caught on was the cable itself. From the very beginning, all 40-conductor IDE/ATA cables should have been made so that they would work with cable select. There's actually no need to have different cable types, because if you set a drive to "master" or "slave" explicitly, it just ignores the CSEL setting. So a cable select cable can be used either way: regular jumpering or cable select.

Unfortunately, regular 40-conductor IDE/ATA cables don't support cable select. (Why this came about I do not know, but I suspect that some bean counter determined they could save five cents on each PC by doing this.) So to use cable select you need a special cable, and these are of course non-standard, making them a special purchase. Also, many people don't understand cable select, nor do they realize it needs a special cable. If you set both drives to "CS" and then use them on a regular (non-cable-select) IDE cable, both drives will configure themselves as "master", causing a configuration conflict.

Making matters worse, the 40-conductor IDE/ATA cable select cables have the "master connector" as the middle device and the "slave connector" as the device at the end of the cable, farthest from the host. For signaling reasons, it's best to put a single drive at the end of a cable, not put it in the middle leaving a "stub" of wire hanging off the end of the channel. But if you do this, that single drive sets itself as a slave with no master, a technically illegal configuration. Worse, suppose you do this, and your hard disk sets itself as a slave, and the system boots from it without problem, as most would. Then, you decide to add a new hard disk. You set it to cable select and attach it to the middle connector. The new drive then becomes the master, and thus moves ahead of the old drive in precedence! The system will try to boot from it instead of your old drive (which some people might want, but many do not.)

To get around this problem, a second type of 40-wire cable select cable was created, the so-called "Y-shaped" cable. On this one, the connector to the system is in the middle, and the slave and master connectors are on the two opposite ends of the cable. This certainly makes things less confusing, but has its own difficulties. For starters, IDE/ATA cables are very limited in length, which means this "Y-shaped" cable was hard to use in large tower systems. All your drives had to be mounted very close to the motherboard or controller card so the cable would reach. And again, the cable was a special item.

As you can see, the traditional way of doing cable select was a total mess, which was why it was never widely adopted. The key reason for this mess was--once again--lack of standardization. I rather expected cable select to eventually wither away. However, when the 80-conductor Ultra DMA cable was introduced, the cable select feature was much improved, changing the potential of this feature. The two key changes were:
Drive Position: Unlike the old cables, with the 80-conductor cable, the master connector is at the end of the cable, and the slave is in the middle. As I explained above, this is a much more sensible arrangement, since a single drive placed at the end of the cable will be a master, and a second drive added in the middle a slave.
Universality: All 80-conductor IDE/ATA cables support cable select (or at least, all of the ones that are built to meet the ATA standards). This means there's no confusion over what cables support the feature, and no need for strange "Y-cables" and other non-standard solutions.

These two changes mean a world of difference for the future of cable select. Since these cables will eventually completely replace all of the 40-conductor cables, all systems will be capable of running cable select without any special hardware being needed. As I mentioned before, you can still explicitly set drives to master or slave if you want to, and the CSEL signal will be ignored by the drives. So the bottom line is that these cables work either way, cable select or not. What will finally make cable select catch on? If drive manufacturers and systems integrators widely agree to use it, and the manufacturers start shipping drives with the "CS" jumpers on by default.