Guys, question... Getting lots of unstability running to hard disks...

[themaidenmaniac]

Hey all, over the last year ive been having a serious amount of stability problems with my computer leading to me reformatting around every 2 months thanks to a blue screen of death or the like. When it actually works, xp seems to boot so damn slow its unreal.

im using two seagate hard disks, one 80GB master set with the jumpers to master, and one 200gb set to slave. Im using a standard cheap IDE cable that came with an old computer that seems to link the two drives and make them work.

So my question is really guys, is there anything to consider that i do not know about when running 2 hard disks? And is an IDE cable an IDE cable (at least that is what i assumed). I assume i can take two random hard disks and just plug them together like i have?

Thanks if you can shed any light here!

Regards,

kev

[scrandman]

Make sure the master drive is the one on the end of the cable, and the slave the one in the "middle".

[Zak33]

is an IDE cable an IDE cable (at least that is what i assumed).

no..its not...older PC's didn't have EIDE 133 cables.

You need to invest in new cables just to be sure..they're not expensive.

[Zak33]

look....

a 33 cable (slow)
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...ProductID=1833

and a 133 cable (fast for hard drives)
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=135759

no pictures, just proving a point.

Later motherboards and cables can support Cable Select....

that is where the jumper on the back of your drive is set to Cable. Then the position you put the master or slave on the cable determines which is which.

I think you've got an old CD ribbon cable (well...may be an old HDD cable..same thing really....slow)

[themaidenmaniac]

hi dude, thanks for checking the thread out this is what ive got:



what i was trying to say was, is there such thing as a good and a bad one of these

Cheers

[scrandman]

Yes indeed.

On a build for a friend a while back, he was getting random BSODs. Eventually I tracked the problem down to a tiny nick in the insulation of on of the wires on the IDE cable. Fitted a new cable, and it's been rock solid since.