>
> Hi All
>
> I have a rather stupid question about hard disks:
>
> You can have
> hda
> hdb
> hdc
> hdd
>
> These are either primary masters, primarly slaves, secondary masters or
> secondary slaves. I am afraid I am a bit in the dark here. All I know is
> that hda because it is "a", is the primary master from which you should
> always boot lilo and hdb the secondary master, as it is "b"(comes after
> "a") . Hdc is generally the CDROM. But can anyone tell me what this
> master /slave designation means and why you can, for example, have a hdd
> disk without having a hdb disk (I came across this recently)? Stupid
> questions, I know, but I still like to find out.
>
> Thanks
>
>
> --
> Hugo Bouckaert
>
Most systems come with 2 ide channels build on the motherboard it's self,
each channel can hold a told of 2 devices.
There is the primary and secondary ide channels, and each one of those
devices can have 2 devices, one master and one slave.
Only one of these devices may be in use at the same time, you can't access
both devices at the excact same time. Only one devices can have control
over the channel at a time. One thing it does is it can switch over
really quick so it isn't really noticed by the 'naked eye'
Say you have 2 hardrives and a cdrom. Put the first hard drive on
primary/master the second hard drive as primary/slave and the
cdrom as secondary/master
It doesn't matter really how you put em, you could put your cdrom as
primary master, if you really wanted to.
One ide there will be a jumper you can change to either master or slave,
some times there is a cable select. One thing you should not that you
can not have 2 master or 2 slaves on the same ide channel.
This is kinda of a long email, There is a really good book out there
called upgrading and repairing pc's and it can explain it alot better than
I can. Big thick book about 800 pages jammed packed with everything from
cdrom to zip drives and everything in between. There are also others out
there.
