Installing UDMA IDE cable backwards with HDD in middle!

[GTS]

Physically? Yes. Will it work properly 100% of the time? No. The distance
presented on the ide cable between slave and master, and the fact that
master should be at the end of the cable are functions of ATA.

Well as I posted I managed to do it without reversing the cable. However, I
do have the master drive in the middle and the slave at the end. All works
as before, Sandra benchmarks the master drive well above similar ATA-100 8mb
buffer models in the comparison list - so I was curious about your statement
that 'master should be at the end of the cable are functions of ATA.
When I first posted the original question, I did have an inkling that the
master / slave markings on the cable were only for cable select purposes?
Certainly in pre-UDMA days I think it was always the users choice as to
where the master and slave drives went, so long as the jumpers were set
correctly? I can't remember it being an issue in the past...

 

[GTS]

Well as I posted I managed to do it without reversing the cable. However, I
do have the master drive in the middle and the slave at the end. All works
as before, Sandra benchmarks the master drive well above similar ATA-100 8mb
buffer models in the comparison list - so I was curious about your statement
that 'master should be at the end of the cable are functions of ATA.
When I first posted the original question, I did have an inkling that the
master / slave markings on the cable were only for cable select purposes?
Certainly in pre-UDMA days I think it was always the users choice as to
where the master and slave drives went, so long as the jumpers were set
correctly? I can't remember it being an issue in the past...

Just an afterthought - it seems much more gracefull in a standard case to
have the IDE cable from mobo-to HDD-to Optical, as the alternative is to
have the cable doubling back from the optical to the HDD, which is just
messy!