Downside to adding a hard drive to CDROM cable

I have a Dell 2400 PC. It only has one HD bay and the primary IDE cable has only one connector. I need to transfer data from a second HD to this computer. I believe you can connect a HD to the CDROM/Optical Drive cable. If possible this would be the simplest solution because of the way things are laid out in the case.

First, is it possible to use the CDROM cable to connect a HD? If so, does the HD go as slave or master on this cable? Lastly, if I can secure the HD from vibrations, is it a bad thing to leave it connected as extra data space?

Thanks for all opinions/advice.

 

Yes you can add a second HD onto the the IDE cable with the CD. And assuming the CD is set up as a Master the HD would need to be slave.

 

The only downside is slower transfer times....wobbles

 

Thanks for the reply Yargwel. I saw somewhere in the last day or so that adding the HD to the optical cable will "slow it down to a crawl". Which concurs with what WobblesRArt says in his post. I knew my gut was telling me there was something wrong with my idea. Oh well, I have to get the data off the drive so I'll see how things go. I guess if the transfer speeds are really slow, I'll temporarily disconnect the DVD drive and nix the idea of keeping the HD connected after I get my data.

I appreciate the replies.