Cable select, also referred to by the acronym CS, is a disk drive jumper setting which automatically sets the priority of a disk drive by its position on its data cable. When cable select is enabled, the drive configures itself as a primary or secondary depending on its position in the drive chain. For cable select to work, an IDE/EIDE drive must have its jumpers set to CS and be using a cable that supports cable select.

Users can identify if the flat ribbon cable supports cable select by examining the cable for any of the below characteristics.

  • The cable is an 80-wire with 40-pin connector Ultra ATA cable.
  • Cable has primary and secondary printed on the cable or on the cable connectors.

CD terms, Computer acronyms, DS, Hard drive terms, Jumper, Master, Slave

If a drive is not detected while using cable select, try setting one drive to primary and the other to secondary, instead of using cable select. If, after changing the jumpers, the drive is still not detected, it’s a bad drive.

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