Primary IDE Master and Slave connectors

  • Thread starter Thread starter Phyl
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Phyl

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I've installed a second hard drive in my PC so I'm re-arranging the IDE cables to acheive the set up I want:

Primary master - HD#1 (Operating system)
Primary slave - CD-RW

Secondary master - HD#2 (Giga Samples)
Secondary slave - CDR

Each IDE cable has 3 connectors, one for the mother board, one labelled master and one labelled slave.

Here's my problem/question. Does the device I want to be the master really have to be connected to the IDE plug labelled "master"? This may sound like a stupid question, but the computer store tells me it doesn't matter. They say that even if a HD is connected to the slave plug, it will be the master as long as you've got the jumpers on the rear of the HD set correctly.

When ever I try to use the slave plug for my hard drive, the computer tells me it can't find the operating system.
 
I don't believe that you need to have it plugged into the master as marked on the cable, however you will possible need to change the jumper settings on the back of the HDD's..

The only thing is that you will need to put your bootable on the Primary ID.

Hope this helps,

Porter
 
Thanks Porter.

For some strange reason i cannot connect the "slave" plug on my primary IDE channel cable to my bootable HD. The system can't find the operating system when I do this. I haven't changed the jumpering on this HD either.

Somehow the system seems to recognize that the HD is on the secondary plug instead of the primary.

I suspected this to be the case because the manufacturer goes to the trouble to label the plugs "master" and "slave", but then I let the computer store guy convince me otherwise.
 
What is your CD drive set to? It is set to Slave?

Also, is BIOS detecting both drives on the one channel... usually access BIOS by pressing Del or F12 on boot up.

Porter
 
IDE 1 to Master HD and slave connect to CDRW
IDE 2 to HD 2 and slave connect to CDR
It is recommended you connect the cables as labeled. The data flow thru the cable is to the master first, slave second.
And make sure your jumpers are set HD1{master with slave present} CDRW{slave}
HD2{master with slave present} CDR{slave}
 
Thanks Slavetech.

Martin Walker of SOS magazine confirms what you said. With an 80 pin IDE cable, you must connect your master device to the master plug, slave to slave...

Once again the guy at the computer shop doesn't know what he's talking about.

The last time I went there I was buying a second hard drive for another computer. He told me that I also needed to buy an additional IDE controller because otherwise my new hard drive on the secondary IDE channel would slow down the access to the hard drive on the primary channel. Ugh...
 
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