IDE. Master/Slave

[djdesai_98]

Hello,
Can anybody give a brief explanation on what is master & slave? I have one SATA HD, one UDMA HD, one CDROM, and one CD R/W. Which ones are masters, and which ones are slaves, and how does one make them so?

JIM

 

[AWS]

There are 2 ways to make a drive a master or slave.
First way is to set the pins on the drives. Look at the diagram on each drive to see how to do it. When you buy a drive it comes with pin set as master.
The second way is to use cable select. You either reomve the pins or set the pin for cable select on the drive if the drive has that setting. Then connect the drive you want as master on the first conection up from the onboard controller and the slave on the last connector or the one at the end of the cable.
Primary master drive will normally be boot drive.