how should i set up hardware

I have 1 IDE slot and 2 SATA slots on my mother board, I want to setup 2 hard drives and 2 dvd burners on my system. I also have 2 IDE to SATA converters. What would be the best way to set this hardware up?

 

I would use the IDE connector to attach to the 2 DVD drives. You'll need an IDE ribbon cable with 3 header connectors on it. One plugs into the MoBo and the remaining 2 connect to the IDE DVD drive connectors. By convention, use jumpers on the DVD drives to configure one drive as master and the other as slave. The remaining 2 SATA slots can now be used for your hard drives. If you have IDE PATA drives, obviously you'll need the converter. If in the future you get a SATA drive, then installing it will be a matter of removing the PATA drive and converter and installing the SATA drive(s).

 

Should i set the SATA drives as master and slave as well? and does it matter which SATA slot on MOBO to plug Master into?

 

Each SATA channel is always "Master", so it doesn't have the same meaning as it does with the 2 channels in an IDE PATA connector. In your case, if you have IDE PATA drives, set both of them to "Master" when using the converters.