mmkay...
so when i boot my computer it says "80 conductor cable not installed on IDE 1" or something similar. i'm using the IDE cables that came with my mobo, the asus A8N-SLI premium.

i have three(!) IDE HD's and one IDE DVD drive, and my boot drive is SATA.

i got this error when i added my fourth drive (IDE), but i've been ignoring it. this fourth drive is attached to the mobo with the same cable as the DVD drive. the DVD is the master, and the HD is the slave.

so... is the mobo just stating this error because it doesn't like the fact i'm using a HD and a DVD with the same cable? and will this affect the performance of my DVD drive at all? i dont really care about the HD's performance, it's only for storage. it probably wont work too great if i try to copy stuff from a DVD to that fourth drive, or generally run them at the same time, but i really dont need to do that. i just dont want the performance of the DVD or other drives to suffer.

The error message ""80 conductor cable not installed on IDE 1" usually appears, errm, when you don't have an 80 conductor cable installed on IDE 1 (and a device is present on the channel which can take advantage of it).

80-conductors cables allow higher transfer rates, as each alternate strand is a ground which reduces crosstalk between the conductors which actually carry the data, and they're required for ATA/66 speeds and above. If you have a 40-strand cable attached to a HDD on the channel, it will be restricted to ATA/33 transfer rates, even if it's capable of more. It shouldn't affect your DVD drive's operation, but it's a bit annoying, and you might as well get an 80 cable for next to nothing and make the message go away...

hmmmmm.
i have the cable that says "CD-ROM" attached to the IDE HD and the DVD. the DVD used to be the only thing using it, then i just included the HD to it. i thought that cable was 80.. it looks just like the 80-strand that i used with the other IDE HD's... or are all DVD/CD cables always 40-strand?

i do have an extra 80-strand lying around (atleast i THINK it's 80?) but it's not long enough, unless i can attach it to the mobo the "wrong" way. which is to put the "blue" end (which is meant to be plugged to the mobo) to the DVD and the grey (slave) to the mobo and the black (master) to the HD.. this wouldn't have worked back in the golden days with those 40-strands, but maybe these new fancy cables have "fixed" this issue somehow...?

Unless I'm much mistaken, most current DVD drives are only capable of ATA-33 (or whatever it's actually called) whereas the HD will be capable of ATA-100. Quite possibly what the error message actually means is that a HD is running on ATA-33 (which would typically be caused by use of a 40 conductor cable). My suggestion would be to set the HD as master rather than slave and the DVD drive as slave rather than master (this is considered good practice anyway) then try disconnecting the DVD drive and see if the error message goes away.

the cable probably isn't 80-strand then... it'd make sense. the cables i have aren't long enough for me to put the HD as a master though, but what would this help anyway? wont the HD get priority over the DVD this way? like if i'd play a DVD for example... and at the same time open some file on that HD, wont the playback of the DVD pause for the duration of that HD access?

How are you setting the drives to be Master/Slave? with the jumpers or with cable select?

with jumpers.
would cable select work better? i just didn't feel like fiddling with it at the time...

If you can get two of them to compare to each other, the difference between the 40-conductor and 80-conductor cables is pretty obvious.

Anyone suggested that you might also have the cable the wrong way around, most of the time it doesnt care, but we are talking computers here and they are bastards.


Andy

As a reference, a 40 conductor cable looks to have about the same wire density as a floppy cable, whereas an 80 conducter cable looks to be a lot more dense... but the difference between the two is definitely obvious. Also, I have noticed that 80 conductor cables tend to be a darker shade of gray than 40 conductor cables, but that's still not a perfect indicator.

oh if only life was that easy...
but nay, it isn't. cos my conductor cables dont show any wires. they're covered in this black plastic coating... i could differentiate the normal looking grey cables from each other but no, not these.

i'm pretty sure the cable is in there the wrong way though. but i cant change it because it's just not long enough the other way. and i wont buy a new 1 even if i could get one for 1 cent cos i'm just lazy like that. or i have principles. same thing.

so all i really care about is if this is having any effect on my DVD drive or not. it seems to work but i'm not sure how well. so is there any sort of diagnostic i could run on it to be sure?

I thought devices weren't even recognized correctly if a cable was plugged in backwards? Just check your BIOS to see what is actually recognized.

CD/DVD drives only need ATA/33 as a connection speed.

Your hard drive is (unless really old) faster than ATA/33... and it will be 'capped' to the slower device (DVD) on the cable.

hmm... AFAIK if DMA is enabled for both drives on an IDE channel, they'll each talk to the host at the maximum speed of which they're capable (cable permitting). If the cable were swapped out for an 80-strand the HDD should be able to work at full speed, although if the DVD drive were only capable of PIO mode (unlikely), *both* devices on that channel would have DMA disabled, with low transfer speeds and high CPU overhead.

The OP has said he can't be arsed anyway though, so I guess the point is moot...

Isn't what I understood... I thought faster was dragged to slower... but I'm very willing to be bought up to date...

I suspect it is happening because that second ATA cable is a 40-conductor one. Buy yourself a second 80-conductor cable. Most DVD's are ATA66+

I was always told never to put optical drives on the same cable as Hard drives because you get various problems that arise because of it.

If you only have 4HD's, cant you put 2x HD's per cable, and the optical drive on its own cable? You have 5 total devices, so you must have at least 3 cables anyhow.

Aris, his boot drive is SATA. I've placed drives on the same cable as ATAPI devices for years, never had any trouble.