What are master and slave options?

[Herakles]

I have 120 gb seagete hdd. And I will buy another 400 gb hdd.
And what are the meanings of master and slave options?
And if I install an xp on 400 gb hdd, will there be a problem?

[clocker]

"Master" and "slave" refer to the drive's position on the IDE cable.
Master is the very end and slave is in the middle.
These designations do not apply to SATA drives as there is but one device per cable.

No problems installing XP on a large drive.

[AmpeD]

master is the primary drive and slave is the secondary. make whichever drive has higher rpm's the master and install xp on the master

[Herakles]

thanks for the info.

[Chewie]

master is the primary drive and slave is the secondary. make whichever drive has higher rpm's the master and install xp on the master
Oh, has the definition changed? Primary used to be IDE0 and secondary IDE1.

[The_Hunter]

always have my master first and slave on the end never had a problem

[Racket]

Chewie, lol. A motherboard can have multiple IDE channels: primary, secondary, tertiary, etc. Each IDE channel can have 2 items on it, but the controller can access only one at a time. Thus, the terminology for master/slave on each IDE channel. An IDE cable has the Master connection furthest from the motherboard connection while the slave connection is proximally between the master connection.

It's easiest if your motherboard and drives support Cable Select (CS). You just put the jumper for each device to the CS pin and attach the cables to which device you want master and slave. The cables are even color-coded to make it simpler.

[Chewie]

Chewie, lol. A motherboard can have multiple IDE channels: primary, secondary, tertiary, etc. Each IDE channel can have 2 items on it, but the controller can access only one at a time. Thus, the terminology for master/slave on each IDE channel. An IDE cable has the Master connection furthest from the motherboard connection while the slave connection is proximally between the master connection.

It's easiest if your motherboard and drives support Cable Select (CS). You just put the jumper for each device to the CS pin and attach the cables to which device you want master and slave. The cables are even color-coded to make it simpler.RHD lol, I'm fully aware of Primary, Secondary and tertiary IDE channels.
AmpeD, however, appears to be confusing them with Master and Slave positions.

:P :lol:

BTW if we're going to get really pedantic, I would like to be the first to point out that it's the connectors that are often (though not always) colour-coded rather than the cables themselves.:P

[Racket]

funny. I knew you did. Ye old bastard. [insert smiley]. Sorry I should have separated my explanation another paragraph down to distinguish that they were meant for the 1st poster. Sorry, it was a late night last night. :)

edit-all my cables have connectors that are color-coded. guess I am lucky then.

[Chewie]

funny. I knew you did. Ye old bastard. [insert smiley]. Sorry I should have separated my explanation another paragraph down to distinguish that they were meant for the 1st poster. Sorry, it was a late night last night. :)

edit-all my cables are color-coded. guess I am lucky then.Colour-coded cables? Like, for kids? :p
IDNO you learn something new every day.

[Appzalien]

Actually Clockers first post is correct, the IDE cable is specific to the drives jumper. Master should be connected to the terminating end and slave to the middle connection. Its when using CS (cable select) that it doesn't matter but the Drive with the OS should be in the master position. And only accessing one drive at a time goes back to the 40wire ide ribbon, with 80wire ribbons both drives can be accessed at the same time.

The_Hunter, If you infact have your master jumpered drive in the middle and your slave jumpered drive at the end, maybe you should try correcting them and see if you get improved drive access speeds. Actually your luck your OS even boots, your Operating System must be on your slaved drive.

[The_Hunter]

nope have always had the slave at the end of the cable for many many years with no worries. the operating system is on the master drive which is first. bios always picks them up in the right order also, i always have the hard drives and the burners set to master and slave not cable select.

[lynx]

If you set the master and slave identifiers by jumper, then for identification purposes it does not matter where you place them on the cable.

The master drive always has the signal termination resistors enabled, so it should go at the end of the cable. However, with 40 wire cable and comparatively low speeds this didn't matter much.

That changes with high speed transfers over 80 wire cables, the master MUST go at the end of the cable or you can get signal degradation and data errors. The hardware is capable of detecting and correcting these errors (usually by retransmission) and the fault may not even be reported, but you will have slower data transfers.

The simplest way to set this up with 80 wire cable is to set all drives to CS (cable select), and always make sure that there is a drive at the end of the cable. Your boot drive doesn't even need to be the master in most cases these days, but it will avoid confusion if you organise it that way.