IDE disk problem

[Kostas Sfakiotakis]

Brian Gaynor wrote:
> On Mon, 2005-04-11 at 16:36 -0700, Rick Stevens wrote:
> 
> 
>>Personally, I NEVER TRUST THE "CS" SETTING!  It is totally unreliable.
>>Jumper one drive as "MA" (ideally, the one you're using now) and the
>>other as "SL" and you should be fine.
> 
> 
> I have never personally seen problems with drives set to Cable Select on
> a modern machine.  Many high-volume manufacturers (Dell and Compaq are
> two I have personal experience with) have been shipping CS configured
> machines for 6 years or more.

If the drive marked as Cable Select or "CS" is together with a drive 
jumpered
as Slave , then the IDE controller replaces the cable select with 
"Master" whereas
if the drive marked as Cable Select is together with another one marked 
as Master
then the Cable Select is considered as "Slave" . Special Care is needed 
in case
the Cable Select is alone . At that point am not certain that the 
Controller can replace
the Cable Select setting with "Single". I know for certain that my 160 
GB Western Digital
hard disk has different jumper positions if it alone "Master w/o Slave" 
or Master if a slave
disk is present . By the way this very disk ( 160 GB WD ) was originally 
shipped to me as
Cable Select , probably because the shop didn't new  my hard disk 
configuration and
so it had the most "compatible" position . IMO it would be preferable 
not to use
the Cable Select setting even when there is no ambiguity about what the 
drive realy is .


Kind Regards,
         Kostas