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General discussion

My secondary HD (SATA) is set to Master?

by iflyimpil0t Jul 30, 2009 5:48AM PDT

Hi everyone,

I just installed a new hard drive as my main one and made the other one a backup drive. They are both SATA drives. However when I go into the BIOS, in the devices menu, I see that my main hard drive is under IDE Channel 0 Master -- which I assume is ok. But my other drive is listed under IDE Channel 1 also as Master. I always thought that a backup or secondary drive was to be set as "Slave"? I was wondering if this is okay or if this would cause any problems on bootup? Anyway, I know that one should plug their main (operating system) hard drive on the first SATA port which I did with my main drive, and as for the secondary I plugged it into the next available one. Did I do something wrong?

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4 Posts
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All your sata drives are belong to us.
by r. proffitt Forum moderator Jul 30, 2009 6:02AM PDT

Sorry, I had to.

All SATA drives are masters. Now if you use that IDE EMULATION feature of some BIOS you move the SATA connections around till you get what drive on what emulated IDE connection.

Sorry but it is quite confusing at first. Keep trying.
Bob

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Thanks!
by iflyimpil0t Jul 30, 2009 6:23AM PDT

Bob,

Thanks for the quick reply! I'm still pretty new to SATA. So in this case, is it okay for me to leave everything the way it is?

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(NT) NT. All is well, leave it as is.
by Jonmor68 Jul 30, 2009 6:32AM PDT
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Your choice on that.
by r. proffitt Forum moderator Jul 30, 2009 6:36AM PDT

Some must have it exactly some way or another. But if everything works, stop fixing it.
Bob

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