How to Wire a Hard Drive and Optical Drive on One IDE Cable

You can connect two drives to one IDE cable.

Older computers use the Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE) interface for hard drives and optical drives. Motherboards with IDE connections typically offer only two IDE ports -- you can only use up to two IDE cables in the computer at any one time. Most IDEs take two drives at one time. When two drives are connected to one IDE cable, one is called a "master" while the other is called a "slave." Setting up drives in this way takes some tweaking on the back of each drive.

Instructions

1. Check the jumper settings on the back of your optical drive and hard drive. The jumpers are two short rows of pins with one small piece of plastic covering two pins. On the drive's label is a diagram showing different jumper settings. Pull the jumper off the optical drive's pins and place it over the pins for the "master" setting. Also move the jumper on the hard drive to the "slave" setting.

2. Plug the first connector on the IDE cable into the optical drive. This first connector is the one on the very end of the cable. Plug the hard drive into the next connector on the IDE cable. Plug the connector on the other end of the IDE cable into one of the 40-pin sockets on the motherboard. Check that both drives are plugged into a power cable attached to the power supply.

3. Plug in the computer and boot it up. Before Windows loads, boot into BIOS by pressing the set-up key --usually "Esc" or a function key. Check that both drives are recognized by the computer by finding them in the hardware list that BIOS shows you. BIOS should show that the optical drive is set to "slave," and the hard drive is set to "master." If these settings appear incorrect in BIOS, go back and double-check your cabling.

4. Reboot the computer and install any driver discs that came with either drive. Run the driver installation and then boot up to Windows and open up "My Computer" to see the drive icons. If both drives are there and open, that means everything worked out.

References

• "CompTIA A+ Certification All-in-One Exam Guide"; Michael Meyers; 2010