I think i fried my IDE cable

[failurbydesign]

Is it possiable to fry an IDE cable, cuz mine was workin till i tried adding a hard drive to it (the ocmputer was off) and then when it tried to boot, it freake dout. Now i cant see my dvd burner or cd burner....any ideas?

 

[kcnychief]

I would check jumper settings, make sure they are set to either Cable Select, or Master/Slave accordingly.

 

[Aprox]

Exactly, check your jumpers and read the diagrams on the drives carefully. You will probably have to remove them to read them.

To anwser your question though; yes, it is possible for an IDE cable to go out on you. Not likely out of the blue, or at all. But it is possible for an old cable to have one of the strands or more break, especially if you have bent it back and forth a lot.

 

[failurbydesign]

Jumpers? ...all i did was diconnect my cd drive and place a hard drive in its place...

 

[Shamus MacNoob]

And the cd you took off was set to what ? Master or Slave? I would set the hard drive to match the settings of the cd rom you took off .

 

[American Zombie]

Wanted to add if you have a DVD or CD drive on that cable with the hard drive then the hard drive is going to slow down to whatever the transfer rate the DVD/CD drive is rated at. Normally DVD/CD drives are UDMA/ATA 2 or 4.

 

[ElementalDragon]

^^^ what he said. Hard drives and optical drives being on the same IDE cable is basically one HUGE taboo.

failurbydesign: you don't know what jumpers are? ..... 21 must be the new "old" now... lol, j/k. it's the little plastic square on the back of the drive with a small bit of metal going across which is used to connect two pins on the back of the drive. when you look at the back of the drives, there will be the plug for power, the IDE cable, and then there should be a set of..... i think like 6 or 7 pins, with said little jumper. on the label of the drive it will show a diagram for where the jumper should be for whatever position you want it to be on (Master = primary drive/boot drive, Slave = secondary drive, Cable Select = determined by where the drive is on the cable). i usually set them to master or slave.... not a fan of trusting Cable Select.

 

[Mainframeguy]

peersonally - I say cable select is cool - so long as you know how you have routed your cable... I used to set jumpers to over rule cable, but have found CS reliable and useful - so that is all I use now.

 

[Admiral Michael]

Also most of the time if two devices on a cable have the same assignment (both master) then nothing will be detected. Which may be your problem. I would also follow what American Zombie said, don't put a HDD and optical drive on the same cable, unless you have no other choice.

 

[LeeJend]

Make sure you put the connector on right. The are supposed to have a square plastic key sticking up in the middle so it can only go in one way but I have seen some with out the square key.

Jumpers 101 with pictures:
http://www.wdc.com/en/library/eide/2579-001037.pdf#search="hd jumpers"

Most likely it is your jumper settings. Drives's usually ship set up to be the only drive on the cable, you have to move the jumper.

If the cable is a ribbon cable it is easy to damage them if you pull them off by the ribbon wires instead of by the connector. If that happens it is toast.

 

[failurbydesign]

Ok...all the jumpers are ok, i didnt change them, like i said i unplugged the cd drive and connected a hard drive (which i come to find out is bad as in doesnt work at all...the i connecte dthe drive back up..turned the pcon, didnt boot past the first screen, make a sound and shut off...now i cant see the drives...maybe a bad cable?

 

[Aprox]

Have you tried removing the HD from the system and try booting up?

Like I had mentioned earlier its VERY unlikely that a cable would just go out on you all of a sudden for no good reason. Perhaps if you were in the case a lot digging around and bending the cables around looking and stuff and just being rough with it... maybe. However its still very unlikely its the culprit, try removing the HD from the system if you haven't already and see if that helps.

 

[failurbydesign]

The hard drive isnt in there...its out...its a bad hard drive...

 

[Aprox]

Well if you think its a bad cable, have you tried just using another one?

 

[failurbydesign]

Normally DVD/CD drives are UDMA/ATA 2 or 4.

is that the onei get, ive been soo busy with work

 

[failurbydesign]

oki got one and replaced it, not workin....at all, the power onl;y works to one drive now, not my dvd burner..im gettin freaked out...

 

[LeeJend]

Ok, long list of things it could be starting with:

The rectanglualr 4 pin white connectors are crap
-You can push back a pin when inserting them and it won't make contact.
--Put the connector on then check the back to make sure all the sires are all the way in.
-You can insert them upside down and fry the drive.
-- two corners are chamfered off they should go in so they match up with the chamfered corners in the socket.

The ribbon cables.
-They can be put in upside down also. This will not fry the drive fortunately.
--Check that pin 1 on the ide socket matches up with the red striped wire on the ide cable AT BOTH ENDS.
-Make sure you did not pull the ide cable partially out of the MB when chaning drives.

Back to jumpers. You can not use a new drive out of the box in an existing system. You must set the jumpers on all drives correctly or they will not work. Many times even a single drive in a system will not work if it's jumper is wrong. Check them. Use the link above.

 

[failurbydesign]

ok i got the dvdrw working, but i cant get the cdrom drive to work at all...i took the drive sout, checked them, i chnaged the jumpers from cable select and made one master and one slave. I made the cd drive master, but like i said it doesnt show up.....