3 hard drives & cd rom in Tower

[wurzel]

Hi all,

I have a 2gb & CD Rom on 1 channel & a 40gb laptop drive on the other channel, using IDEFix 97. I'm trying to add another 40gb drive after the laptop but no matter what I do, I can't get either the laptop drive recognised, or if it is, the 2nd drive still isn't. I'm gusseing it has something to do with master/slave, or maybe it's not possible?

Any help gratefully received.

[Thomas]

Well, it *is* possible to have four drives on the IDEfix adapter. That's why it is called a 4-way adapter.

Logically you should have them connected like this:

Channel1 -> HDD1 (master) -> HDD2 (slave)
Channel2 -> CD-ROM (master) -> HDD3 (slave)

But remember that there are three connectors on the adapter, two 40pin (for desktop drives) and one 44pin (for laptop drives).

So your setup (having one laptop drive) should look like this:

Channel1 (44pin) -> HDD1 (master)
Channel1 (40pin) -> HDD2 (slave)
Channel2 (40pin) -> CD-ROM (master) -> HDD3 (slave)

Or something like that. Just make sure that there is only one master and only one slave on each channel.

If the laptop HDD does not have a jumper to choose between master and slave, then it is likely that it does not accept another drive on the channel. In this case you cannot use four drives.

If you add or remove drives, don't forget to run HDToolbox and click once on each drive and let it save the changes it finds.

And finally, of course the drives on the second channel are only recognised if the IDEfix software is running.

Bye,
Thomas

[Brian]

@Thomas
I'm pritty sure you're wrong on that account... there are 3 headers but only one of the 2 headers for Channel 1 can be used at any time.

@wurzel
You're laptop drive is most likely jumpered as master if you've not messed with trying to jumper it so the seccond drive need to be jumpered as slave before any drive on that channel will be accepted.

If you could explain how you're setup is chained together, jumpered and with what cabeling it would be much easier to point to any flaws there might be.

[Thomas]

only one of the 2 headers for Channel 1 can be used at any time.

This probably depends on the hardware. I am almost sure that the description of mine stated that the two connectors are shortened and that you can use either or both. Just be sure to connect only two devices to channel one.

Bye,
Thomas