Bad IDE cables?

[orion pax]

I have a ton of IDE cables and I can not get ANY drive set as slave to work on them except for 1! Are they ALL bad? I mean really! Some are the standard 18 in flat IDE cables. Some are 24in flat cables. 2 are 36in round IDE cables. None of these work. The only one that works is a 18in round IDE cable.

None of my drives will work set as a slave on the slave plug on the IDE cable. I can set one as slave and put it on the Master position and it works but not slave. Does this mean they are all bad?

 

[rolli59]

So when you say slave you already have a master as well on the cable set by jumpers?
Have you tried cable select?

 

[orion pax]

Yes a master as well on the cable set as master by the jumpers. I havent tried cable select as I have always had issues in the past getting cable select to work so I try to avoid it!

What I did was the 1 cable that worked with the 2 particular harddrives that I had attached to it, I removed it and connected each cable to it 1 at a time and booted to bios to see if it detected them. If 2 drives were connected, nothing. If just master then it was fine. Just slave, nothing. 2 of them actually did show something, a bunch of garbage so it was obvious that those 2 are bad. But not sure about the rest.

I will give cable select a try, but pretty confident that I will get the same results. Never had any better with CS in the past!

 

[rolli59]

I actually have never had a cable go bad (have plenty) so I have a hard time believing that you have multiple bad cables.

 

[orion pax]

I know. I am having a hard time believing it too! Well I tried cable select and same thing! I even tried putting a Sony dvd burner on slave with cable select set on both HD and burner (known working) and no go!

I even tried master set as master and slave set as slave with the burner and same thing. So I dont think its an issue with the drives as they work with the 1 cable.

And this is the IDE channel 0 on the motherboard. ms-7030 msi k8 neo 7030 mobo. (non platinum version) I checked the bios and I dont see any settings (that i know of) that would do this, if any!

 

[rolli59]

As far as I know there are no BIOS settings to create this so the cables must be bad, the one working confirming the others.

 

[orion pax]

Ok thanks! I just needed a second opinion! I was having a hard time believing that as well. So off to ebay it is!

Just out of curiosity have you had any issues with cables over 18in? I know older drives fail with a longer cable. Drives based on ata ide 133 from what I have read should work fine on a longer cable. Asking because I need a long cable for my drives to reach in my tower!

 

[rolli59]

No have not had any issues with cable length! Have a couple of 24" or 30" round ones that work fine.

 

[orion pax]

Best answer selected by orion pax.