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Resolved Question

Master and Slave

by Jul 3, 2014 7:18AM PDT

What is the purpose of a master configuration and a slave configuration on a IDE hard drive and what are the differences

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o00pcsm has chosen the best answer to their question. View answer
5 Posts
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Very old technology
by Jul 3, 2014 7:35AM PDT

About the only use I can recall is for when folks added a second HD the master would always be the boot drive. Later, BIOS were made to allow selection but earlier BIOS had limits. Floppies were always first and the master HD was second. One couldn't boot the slave. As well, the BIOS wouldn't recognize and configure drives without the jumpers set properly. Later IDE drives could have the master/slave relationship determined by the cable but, basically, the purpose seemed to be to establish boot priority.

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yeah
by o00pcsm Jul 3, 2014 8:40AM PDT

So you would say that this stuff is just for booting purposes so there isn't any thing special about this and not that much of a difference about this stuff then just for a computer to choice which drive to boot from i'm i right?

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I think the terminology was confusing
by Steven Haninger Jul 3, 2014 11:33PM PDT

This only referred to a drive's priority when on the same cable. PCs could have more than one IDE connection and each allowed a master and slave drive. It's just that BIOS didn't offer much in the way of boot options but that changed as time went on. What a mess it was when ATAPI drives came along (CD-ROMs). Placing a HD and CD-ROM on the same cable could be a mess. I won't get into that.

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You also need to;
by James Denison Jul 4, 2014 2:27AM PDT

know the difference in use between a 40 wire ribbon cable and an 80 wire ribbon cable and what Cable Select is and when it can be used, and when it can't.

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Answer
Some reading
by Jul 3, 2014 7:29AM PDT
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