Only two drives can be supported on an IDE cable. One Master and one Slave.
Modern hard drives connect to the hard drive using a SATA cable. Older ones use a larger, slower IDE cable.
Older hard drives typically used a flat ribbon cable, known as an "IDE" or "ATA" cable. Modern SATA drives use a thick but narrow cable, usually red in color.
Check the motherboard. You can connect two drives to a single parallel cable. Most traditional motherboards have two IDE sockets and you can run a maximum of four drives. (one cable per socket, two drives per cable) but you need to configure the drives with jumpers as "primary" and "slave". Many of the newer motherboards have a "SATA" (Serial ATA) socket or some combination of SATA and IDE but you'd have to use a SATA drive with a SATA cable to use the SATA socket.
Typically EIDE cables connect to IDE Hard-drives and optical drives such as CD and DVD Drives. The cable connects between the motherboard of the computer and the hard-drive or optical drive. Normally most motherboards have two idea buses. You can have to drives per cable. So a total of 4 drives.
Only two drives can be supported on an IDE cable. One Master and one Slave.
Hard Drives connect to the motherboard one of two ways. Either using a 40-wire/40-pin HDD ribbon cable, or an 80-wire/40-pin HDD ribbon cable. HDD stands for Hard Drive Disk.
IDE is a connection standard in computing. The pins refer to the ends of the cable used to connect devices (usually hard drives).
SATA IDE cable do most hard drives use toda.
Most external hard drives come with the necessary USB cable. Most electronics retailers carry USB cables if you need to buy an extra.
Most computers have two internal connections for hard drives. You may also connect a third (external) hard drive via USB.
Assuming you mean on an IBM compatible with IDE drives???The ribbon cable should have two connectors on one end and one connector on the other. The single end should be plugged into the motherboard or disk controller. The OTHER end should be plugged in to the two hard drives. MAKE SURE YOU PAY ATTENTION TO THE ORIENTATION OF THE PLUGS!!!The boot disk drive should have the jumpers set to "master", and the second disk drive should be jumpered as "slave". Next, just connect the power to both drives and you're ready to go.UNFORTUNATELY...there are many newer motherboards that only have a single IDE socket. That becomes a problem when you need to connect a CD/DVD. With a single IDE socket you can connect a hard drive and a CD/DVD, but not a second hard drive.You'll need to check your hardware to see what you have.ORIf your computer uses the somewhat newer/faster SATA drive, you should have 2 SATA ports on your motherboard. Plug a cable into each, and a drive into each cable. Note that not all motherboards will have 2 SATA ports, so you may need to purchase a SATA multiplier.
A Molex Connector connects to optical drives and hard drives.