Build Advice IDE Chain

Hi all

Just got a new ASUS M3A78 PRO 780G Socket AM2.

Have 2 HDD one IDE and one SATA. Also have 2 IDE DVD drives.

Now my problem is that this board only has one IDE port, and another port labelled as Floppy.

My SATA drive is the main drive, the ide is a backup/storage drive.

1. Can I attach the DVD to the floppy connector?
2. Can I chain the DVD and IDE HDD?

In the past I had the 2 dvd's chained, but only ever use one now, the writer, so happy to take out the other one.

Advice greatly appreciated.

 

No, you need an IDE to SATA adapter which you can get from ebay for under a tenner if you want to use two DVD drives. Otherwise you can use one IDE DVD and one HD. One IDE cable can connect 2 devices.

 

1: no
2: yes. you can fit any 2 IDE devices to one channel. you might want to set the HDD to be master; as that device will be used more often.

 

Ah did not know they existed, will look into that now thanks

 

+1

As Fod says, set the hard drive to master (if connecting a rom drive on the same channel, set it to slave).

 

OK thanks all, first off then I will do some rearranging in the case so that the HDD and DVD are close enough together to chain, and if that works out well, will not need to spend money to get the other cabel

 

As said, you can connect an HDD and Optical drive via IDE. But it is not recommended. Problem comes when the system access both device simultaneously, it can't really manage data together, so a performance decrease will be visible when you install software via disk, especially the really big ones like an OS, and when you run data from the Optical drive.
It's not going to be a kill-PC thing, but if you want the best computer experience, I suggest getting a SATA optical drive (cheap method, as a DVD burner cost nothing these days.. shipping might be more expensive than the device ), or changing your HDD from IDE to SATA (more expensive).
This is the reason why it was dropped with SATA, and highly recommended to attach the HDD and Optical drive on different channel.

The idea of the dual channel was not what most used to do (2 different device on 1 channel), but rather 2 of the same device per channel. In other word, for example 2 optical drive on 1 channel (as its slow enough to manage both data simultaneously), or 2 HDD's as it's most unlikely that you use both, and while 1 HDD execute an instruction, the second be sent a new instruction.

 

A perfectly valid point. Sata rom drives are 'cheap as chips' these days so it is another good option.