master & slave assembly

  • Thread starter Thread starter attilathehun1
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attilathehun1

Ok, I've decided to use the old hard drive, which is a-ok with my brother,
and I want to know which drive to make the master and which to make the
slave. I only have one connection for IDE and 2 SATA connections, and 1
floppy connection. So, I want to put the CD drive and hard drive on one IDE
cable. Which one should I make the master and which one should I make the
slave? I'm using this old cable, that was still packaged in it's plastic,
that is roung not flat. It's an ultra ATA cable, which says, Ultra ATA Cable
Master, Ultra ATA Cable Slave, and Ultra ATA Cable System. Master is black,
Slave is grey, and System is blue. I've never seen an IDE cable like this
before. It costs more than the flat IDE cables, but the employee gave me a
discount of a dollar off.
I'm thinking that the optical drive or DVD/CD-R drive should be the master
and the hard drive should be the slave. The other part of me is saying the
hard drive should be the master and the optical drive should be the slave.
I'm kinda at a lost here.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks, attilathehun1
 
Oh, one more thing I wanted to add.
The hard drive is a Western Digital. On the jumper example, it says: Single
drive, empty, no jumper; Master drive, jumper on the midde prong; Slave
drive, on the fourth prongs. If it's the master or whatever, can you tell me
where to set the jumper also?
Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
attilathehun1
 
attilathehun1 said:
Ok, I've decided to use the old hard drive, which is a-ok with my brother,
and I want to know which drive to make the master and which to make the
slave. I only have one connection for IDE and 2 SATA connections, and 1
floppy connection. So, I want to put the CD drive and hard drive on one IDE
cable. Which one should I make the master and which one should I make the
slave? I'm using this old cable, that was still packaged in it's plastic,
that is roung not flat. It's an ultra ATA cable, which says, Ultra ATA Cable
Master, Ultra ATA Cable Slave, and Ultra ATA Cable System. Master is black,
Slave is grey, and System is blue. I've never seen an IDE cable like this
before. It costs more than the flat IDE cables, but the employee gave me a
discount of a dollar off.
I'm thinking that the optical drive or DVD/CD-R drive should be the master
and the hard drive should be the slave. The other part of me is saying the
hard drive should be the master and the optical drive should be the slave.
I'm kinda at a lost here.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks, attilathehun1
Click to expand...

It is not supposed to matter. If you have a problem, you can switch the position
of the drives. On my current machine, I have a CDROM which is a master (on its
own cable), as I have two IDE cables. The second IDE cable has a couple hard
drives. The CDROM has never complained.

Paul
 
The length of the cable may end up being the determining factor.

If the CD drive is located the farthest away from the motherboard then the
black connector may be the only connector able to reach/attach to the CD
drive, so make this drive the master.

My preference if the cable allows is to make the hard drive the master and
the CD drive as the slave. This means most likely the cable will run from
the motherboard connector (Blue) then to the CD (gray) and finally (black)
to the hard drive. Make certain that you have the cable aligned correctly,
don't try to force it in (look for a small raised block located in the
center of the connector and align it to the CD connector and also for the
hard drive).

JS
 
Ok, I almost forgot. If I do put the hard drive as a slave, what jumper
setting should I use, or no, if I use the hard drive as a master, which
setting should I use? Remember, there is Single, Master, and Slave jumper
settings.
 
attilathehun1 said:
Ok, I almost forgot. If I do put the hard drive as a slave, what jumper
setting should I use, or no, if I use the hard drive as a master, which
setting should I use? Remember, there is Single, Master, and Slave jumper
settings.
Click to expand...

Go back a read the installation instructions, or get them from the WD
website. If you have a 10 pin jumper block you will find that with no
jumper installed it should be the only device on the cable meaning it would
be a Master. If you jumper pins 5 to 6 or what you call the middle jumper
you are connecting it as a Master with another device, hence the
instructions say Dual (Master). If you want it to be a Slave with the cdrom
then you would jumper pins 3 to 4 or what you call the 4th prong and the
instructions state Dual (Slave). The other choice is to jumper pins 1 to 2
for Cable Select and let the installation position on the cable determine
whether it is master or slave.
 
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