Primary and slave

[shaunywhite]

Why if you have two hard drives does one have to be a master and the other a slave???????

Any help very gratefull.

[jpm]

Yep.
You'll get a far deeper explanation than this one but if anything this will be basic. With one hard drive the motherboard/CPU knows who to talk to when its turned on. With two hard drives it can get a little confused. By making one the master and the other the slave you have a hierarchy and confusion is hopefully avoided.
Hope that this is a) helpful and b) correct

[Paleo Pete]

That's basically it, one has to be primary/master and the other secondary/slave so the motherboard/CPU know which one to send/retrieve data to/from.

Is that confusing/aggravating enough? http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/biggrin.gif

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[Bailey]

I would set up both hard drives on the primary channel as slave and master, rather than mix them with other drives. (dvd,cd, etc)

[TSMatt]

Maybe I am wrong, but can't it be set to: Primary1/master, and on your secondary ide also have a master HD?

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IF at first you don't succeed, try not to screw it up again.

[Paleo Pete]

Yep, each IDE channel can support 2 drives, one is Master and the other is Slave. They're called Primary and Secondary. The Master/Slave designation refers to the physical setup of the drives, no matter which IDE channel they are on. The Master is the Primary, Slave is the Secondary on each channel. CD ROM drives and writers use the same designations. And usually it's best not to put a CD ROM drive on the same channel as a hard drive. It will work though, it just slows things down to the speed of the slowest drive's access time.

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