Talk to Gadgets

If you have Implemented two or More Hard disk drives on your computer system, each HDD has to be given different levels so that they compete for control of the computer. Therefore, To allow both hard-drives to work simultaneously, We have to set one HDD for Master and the others to Slave. The system will be controlled (or startup) by the master drive and the other drive which is designated as the slave drive will be used just for storage. Below is the Tutorial or procedure of designating drives to master and/or Slave.

1. What are Jumpers, and Where are they located :-

• Jumpers are metal pins that have small black plastic sleeves that slot on them, they are used to Change the Master/Slave Designation on your your Hard Disk.

• For the location of the jumper selector look at the back side of hard disk the jumper settings should be displayed on the hard drive or in the manufacturer’s book.

2. Single Drive - If this is your only hard drive then set the jumper is defaultly set to master

3. Two Drives – if the new drive will be the main drive, set the jumper to master, if you want it as a secondary drive then set it to slave, alternatively you could use a separate IDE cable on the motherboard’s secondary IDE interface (see motherboard manual).

The IDE cable will be marked down one side with a red or black strip, this denotes Pin 1, match this with the Pin 1 indicator on the back of the hard drive.

If you are simply installing a secondary hard drive for storage, you don’t have to make any changes to the configuration of your current hard drive. However, you will need to set jumpers if you are installing an IDE or SCSI drive, in order to tell the computer that your new drive is not the primary drive.

4. Setting Jumpers:  IDE Drives
IDE can accommodate two drives per channel, with most computers having two channels built in (although newer Intel motherboards that accept LGA775 chips only have one channel). The primary drive on a channel is called the Master, and the secondary one is called the Slave. The IDE channels are also labeled as Primary (or IDE1) and Secondary (or IDE2). The hard drive that the system boots from is usually the primary master, generally if you’re adding a second hard drive you would set it up as the primary slave. (The secondary master and slave are usually used for optical drives, although they can accommodate hard drives if needed.)
Most drives come set to be used as masters, so if you want to use one as a slave, you’ll have to change the jumpers, which are located between the power connector and the IDE connector. Each manufacturer has different jumper settings, so I can’t give you exact instructions here. However, there is often a diagram on the top of the drive telling you how to set the jumpers, and if not there will certainly be instructions in your hard drive’s manual (which you can download from the manufacturer’s website if your hard drive didn’t come with one).

Another jumper setting, which you can use if you have an 80-conductor ribbon cable, is Cable Select. 80-conductor cables can be identified by their much finer wires compared to 40-conductor cables and by their connector colors (the motherboard end will be blue, red, or green, and the drive connectors will be black for the one on the end and gray for the one on the middle). With both drives set to Cable Select, the computer will recognize the drive hooked up to the black end connector as the master and the one hooked up to the middle gray connector as the slave.

5. Setting Jumpers: SCSI Drives
SCSI (pronounced “skuzzy”) is not as common as it used to be, but if you are using a server or high-end workstation, chances are you will have SCSI drives. You can have up to 15 devices on a SCSI chain, compared to two on an IDE channel; each one needs a unique “SCSI ID” so that the controller knows which one is which. Your first SCSI device will have ID 0, your second, ID 1, and so on. SCSI drives usually have jumpers on them that you can use to set the ID. They are often arranged in a base-2 setup – depending on whether a jumper is closed or not, it will add a certain amount to the SCSI ID. The following chart gives all the possibilities for SCSI ID configurations.