Installing a second slave drive (CD-RW)

I have recently purchased an internal CD-RW drive for my desktop, but have no available interface connections from the motherboard. I am running a CD-ROM drive and a Zip drive off the secondary IDE socket, and so have no more available plugs on the cable. Is it possible to buy some sort of expansion card to give me more connections? Or can I connect it to the primary IDE port (which my hard drive is connected to at present)? Any advice would be appreciated.

 

it is possible to operate the cdrw from the hard drive line, but that would slow it down a lot; you don't want to do that.

why can't you just dump your cdrom since the cd-rw is basically a newer and improved version of the cdrom?

anywho, if you want an extra controller, look here: http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduct.asp?submit=list&catalog=410&DEPA=0

 

your new CDRW should have come with an IDE cable with two connections. Strogg is right; you don't want the CDRW and the HD on the same cable. My advise is to move the regular CD-ROM drive to the same cable as the HD (primary channel). That way, you can still do on-the-fly copying of CDs and from your HD.


PRimary channel: HD (master) CD-ROM (slave)

Secondary channel: CDRW (master) ZIP (slave)

 

No, do not put a CD device on the same channel as an HD.

Put the Zip drive and the HD on the same channel, and the CD drives on their own.
So....

Primary IDE will be Master:HD, Slave:Zip
Secondary will be Master:CD-R/W, Slave:CD-ROM

Good luck.

 

Thanks for the advice. Having looked into this a bit more, I have discovered that the IDE interface on the drive is a 40 pin IDE socket, but the only SCSI ribbon cables I can find are 50 pin, the 40 pin ones seem to be just for hard drives. Will either work with this drive, or does the ribbon have to be SCSI compatable?

I don't want to tinker too much inside the box, I'm still learning what goes on in there! I can't replace the CD-ROM drive, because it is a DVD-ROM (which I think I forgot to mention earlier).

 

you don't need scsi cables because your drive isn't scsi (well... i certainly hope none of your drives are scsi). but um... so i don't need to ask any more questions:

IF your cdrom drive and zip drive are scsi, you DO have ide space on the motherboard and can just buy an extra 40 pin IDE cable to use for the cdrw.
IF you don't have any scsi devices, i'd dump the cdrom drive because you'll probably never need it again.
IF your new cdrw is a scsi drive, you'll need to buy a scsi adapter for it. search some stores for "scsi adapter". they shouldn't cost too much, although it may be cheaper to just buy a decent IDE cdrw drive.