Wiring up IDE devices

[david at thekramers.net (David Kramer)]

I ended up getting the Sonata case.  Since it's sitting next to a 
half-broken hulk of a case that's been dropped several times, that my 
server's guts are running in until the new box is ready, it's hard to tell 
exactly how quiet it is.

Anywho, in the Sonata case, the optical media area is kinda far from the 
hard drives.  I usually wire my IDE chain like:

IDE0M  Main boot hard drive, software, etc
IDE0S  Optical drive of some sort
IDE1M  Second hard drive, mostly data, apache documentroot, tmp, etc
IDE1S  Optical drive of some sort

The theory is both hard drives should be on separate channels so they can 
talk at the same time.  The problem is, none of the IDE cables I have will 
reach from the hard drive slots to the optical slots.

I suppose I could shop around and find differently-spaced IDE cables that 
might reach, but since EVERY ONE of my current crop of cables has about the 
same distance from the master connector to the slave connector, the 
experienced geek in me is telling me that I must be trying to do something 
that ought not be done.  That that the  Gods must have intended the two hard 
drives to go on one controller and the two optical drives to go on the other 
controller.

What do you all do about this, and why?