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I always go with the end connector for a master but the odd time I've set drives up either way due to physical limitations and havent had problems but the advice given by DrMDJ is excellent, go with that until class is dismissed then go with what works in real life.
As sonewhat of a side note here...
While it (in practice) doesn't really matter whether you put the master on the end or middle connector, it does matter which end connector goes to the motherboard on a 40-pin/80-wire cable when the drive/drives attached is/are ata66 (UDMA mode 3) or above capable. The (generally) blue color coded connector must go to the motherboard. If you flip the cable end-on-end the system will not properly detect that you have a 40-pin/80-wire cable installed beause pin/wire 34 is only grounded at the blue connector side of the cable and the system uses this to detect the type of cable. So if you were to connect the (generally) black end connector to the motherboard the system would see the cable as the old 40-pin/40-wire style and throw up a warning message at boot. The older 40-pin/40-wire (non-CS) cables can be turned end-on-end with no ill effect though.
Hi Dr
All my connector ends are Black,and round cables,and recent ones,though you mentioned (generally) I have not seen many Blue ones recently,rather confusing for many starters..:cool:
Yea, I know not all the cables out there have some sort (even if it isn't blue) color coding for differentiation. In those cases it is generally safe to just see where the largest distance between connectors is and assume the end connector of that pair goes to the motherboard (assuming a 3 connector cable of course ;) ). Then again, if you hook it up wrong you'll get a mesage informing ya.:D