Originally posted by: pentiumobile
I am really new in this shi#. I just put the OS in one drive and put the games on it, or lets say any thing that I want to run optimally. Then I just added the other drive to the second spot and use it as a pen drive. Basically the second HD is just a big folder that I just drop things. I dont even know that master thing.
Do i need to configure it or something?
What you mean with separate channels?
Thanx for ur help.
Your motherboard has two IDE channels. You can plug two devices per channel, for a total of four drives (either magnetic, such as hard drives and zip drives or optical, such as cd-roms, burners, etc.).
Now, each channel can only handle the two devices when one of them is the Master and the other one is the Slave. This doesn't mean that the Master drive controls the Slave drive, it simply allows the computer to use the drives.
The computer can access one drive per channel at a time, so having the hard drives as masters of their own channel will allow the system to read and write to them simulateneously.
You said that you "added the other drive to the second spot ". Did you plug the cable to the second "plug" in the motherboard or did you plug it to the same cable that the first hard drive is connected to?
Configuring the Master and Slave settings is really easy. You do so by setting jumpers on the drives (those little plastic thingies). If you check the top of your hard drive, you'll be able to see a diagram wich tells you how to configure the jumpers in the back of the drive (it's a sector full of pins, close to the IDE connector), like so:
Master | : : :
Slave : | : :
The | sign indicates where the jumper should be installed.
Or something along those lines. Remeber, always have ONE master and ONE slave per channel.
