Question about SATA

[my sons father]

I have 2 hard drives hooked up to 2 different SATA devices. I would have thought that since they are not on the same chip's ports, they should both be masters. One is showing up as master, the other slave. Does this mean one drive will always be master, while all the rest will be slaves? Will one be controlled by the other's transfer speed? Do they have slave/master jumpers?
Thanks for all the info!

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

With SATA you don't have to worry about Master and Slave settings. The transfer speeds are handled by the controller chip and not the SATA device.

 

[ElFenix]

no jumpers.

iirc, there is still the 1 master, 1 slave arrangement. if you have 4 ports, 2 are master, and 2 are slave. at least, that's my experience.

the other drives don't matter as far as xfer speeds.

 

[Seekermeister]

I only have two SATA ports, but both appear as master.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: ElFenix
no jumpers.

iirc, there is still the 1 master, 1 slave arrangement. if you have 4 ports, 2 are master, and 2 are slave. at least, that's my experience.

the other drives don't matter as far as xfer speeds.

There are no 'master' or 'slave' devices using SATA. Your BIOS may display it that way, but all the devices are on their own independent channels.

 

[ElFenix]

Originally posted by: Matthias99

Originally posted by: ElFenix
no jumpers.

iirc, there is still the 1 master, 1 slave arrangement. if you have 4 ports, 2 are master, and 2 are slave. at least, that's my experience.

the other drives don't matter as far as xfer speeds.

There are no 'master' or 'slave' devices using SATA. Your BIOS may display it that way, but all the devices are on their own independent channels.

damn lazy abit programers

 

[my sons father]

OK, I posted this when I was at work thinking about it. Now I'm home and had a little time to play with it, and here is what I found. I have a Gigabyte DS3 motherboard, and 2 SATA hard drives. One, the Maxtor, was plugged into the yellow SATA port, while the WD was plugged into the purple SATA port. No other SATA devices are on this computer. The WD showed up as a slave. I moved the WD to the yellow port next to the Maxtor, and now it shows up as a master. So for some reason the purple port designated it a slave. This is all I know about it. I can't try the other perple port because my sound card is blocking it.

 

[jleves]

SATA is just serial ATA. ATA describes a drive as master or slave so the protocal is still implemented the same. Bottom line is each bus is totally independent and makes no difference if the addressing of the protocal is master or slave. With four ports, it just means the chipset is defined as having two ATA chains for addressing purposes instead of 4 chains to make everything master.

 

[corkyg]

Yeah, right! And some apps see them as SCSI! Fact is - each SATA drive has a separatre channel. In effect, ALL are masters.

 

[my sons father]

I would love to see someone explain why one of my drives showed up as a slave, if being a slave is not possible for SATA, and why that changed by moving the connection.
PLEASE ONLY REPLY IF YOU ACTUALLY KNOW THE ANSWER.

 

[Matt2]

Do u have 2 purple ports and 2 yellow ports?

 

[Aikouka]

Originally posted by: my sons father
I would love to see someone explain why one of my drives showed up as a slave, if being a slave is not possible for SATA, and why that changed by moving the connection.
PLEASE ONLY REPLY IF YOU ACTUALLY KNOW THE ANSWER.

The different color coded SATA ports on Gigabyte motherboards signify what those ports are connected to. I believe purple = Intel ICHR and yellow = SATA RAID chip.

 

[Zepper]

my son's father,

The yellow ports and the purple ports are controlled by different chips - the yellow are SATA I and are integrated in the mobo's chipset. The purple ports are SATA II and are controlled by a separate controller chip (I think it's a SiliconImage chip - you can find it if you look). You need to read your manual and the FAQ on their web site...
. But on each pair of ports, one drive WILL be primary and the other will be secondary which is decided by the port you hook it to (usu. marked SATA-0/SATA-1). That will figure into the drive letter that Windwoes initially assigns them but nothing else.

.bh.