What is a slave drive?

[Skiing Squirrel]

Well, what is it? Yes, I did do a search and couldnt find the answer. I have a main 40gig Hd with xp on it and another 30gig hd with 98 just sitting in my rig hooked up to nothing. I guess you can do something with that and the 40 gig. Any links on slave drives and what they are/do?

[james.miller]

very basically...

every hdd has a selector on the back: master/slave/cable select
(can be changed be moving the jumper)

A drive set to master is the one that has primary control over the ide cable (hense master).
A drive set to slave is the oppisite.
A drive set to cable-select can be either - you can set it up in your bios.

if you want to add that drive, set it set it to slave, and hook it up to an ide cable. simple.

[Skiing Squirrel]

And how would I switch from one hd to another? how would the mobo know which hd to load? Just go into bios and tell it to load one, and if I want to load another go and change it?

[FTC]

A drive set to cable-select can be either - you can set it up in your bios.


Well, this is generally false. As the word says, cable select means that the position in the cable (connector number) determines which is master and which is slave (not the bios)... this is because both connectors have one line for identifying this.

Now, regarding how you switch from one to another... You don't generally care. If you have 2 or more drives in your system, your operating system will show you all of the partitions existing in each of those... hence they will have different 'drive letter identifiers' assigned by default (Win2K and WinXP alloy you to override this convention). Being master/slave or IDE1/IDE2 (cause generally there are 2 IDE 'channels' will at most determine the lettering order.

Hope this helps
Regards
FTC

[Skiing Squirrel]

I feel like a moron saying this; but I was always wondering why I couldnt hook up more than 2 cdroms! man I feel really stupid. I just did the whole master/slave thing with my burner and spare cdrom, and it works. I will do this to my HD's when I get a bigger psu (unless you think my 300 watt antec will hold powering 2hd's 2cdroms and an overclocked chip).

[Redstone]

2 HD's and an overclocked chip shouldn't be a problem for that PSU. Depends if you have a high performance video card or a ton of power going toward cooling. Then you may want to look at more power. I had a 250w Powerman (Fortron) running 2 HD's without a hitch.

Having a slave drive makes reformatting a breeze. You'll love having a separate storage drive. No different than having a giant floppy disk permanently installed in you computer. If you do a search on reformatting, you should get help on how to run Fdisk for adding a slave drive.

[ArBiTaL 24]

Slaves are really useful, especially for storage of important files if you want to format...

[EmTSea19]

Why can't you hook up two cd roms? What does the master/slave hard drive thing have to do with cd roms? If you have one hard drive, can't you hook up everything you want?

[Skiing Squirrel]

Oh yea, you can hook up 2 cdroms. I just had both of them on the master setting, and only one would show up. All you have to do is locate the jumpers on the cdrom and move one to slave. And on the other cdrom, you just put the jumper to master. Same with the harddrives i think. I have only tried them on the cdroms.

[Ben721]

Yup same with the hard drives. It's really simple. Actually if you turn the hdd's or cd-roms over most show the correct jumper positions for certain settings.

[Skiing Squirrel]

so what happens when u have the harddrives like that. which one will the motherboard boot up to?

[ArBiTaL 24]

The master. Don't set 2 HDD's both as the master.
Also, remember, you can only fit 4 IDE devices total over the two IDE channels.... I.e. if you want 2 HDDs, a DVD-rom, a re-writer and a DVD-RW, put the HDDs on RAID.

[EmTSea19]

Okay, so say I wanted 1 Hard drive, 1 CD Player, 1 CD-RW player and 1 DVD player, how would I hook that up?
I have a WD 80GB, is that enough for everything plus WinXP or should I have more than one hard drive?Thanks for the help, I am building my first system.

[ArBiTaL 24]

80Gb is more than enough for XP and many applications, even for a really avid compter user, unless you're going to be doing a lot of graphics, video and sound editing...

It doesn't really matter that much about the set-up, but i would have the HDD and cd-rom on IDE1, and the DVD-rom and CD-RW on IDE2, with the HDD and DVD as the masters.

One little question- if you have a CD-RW (i presume this is a good one, not like a 2x2x4, right?:D), why do you want a CD-rom installed as well? I would leave that space free in case i ever got a DVD-R/DVD-RW.....

[EmTSea19]

I don't have everything yet, I am still buying components. So far I have my processor and hard drive. I was thinking of buying the Lite On 48x24x48 CD and the 52x24x52 CD-RW because I read that using the CD player a lot can ruin your drive for the CD-RW. If that's not true, then I only need one, and I'll get the CD-RW.

I am also going to have a Floppy Drive.

[ArBiTaL 24]

Originally posted by EmTSea19
I don't have everything yet, I am still buying components. So far I have my processor and hard drive. I was thinking of buying the Lite On 48x24x48 CD and the 52x24x52 CD-RW because I read that using the CD player a lot can ruin your drive for the CD-RW. If that's not true, then I only need one, and I'll get the CD-RW.

I am also going to have a Floppy Drive.

A) What processor and HDD have you got?

B) Umm... you are referring to the lite-on and the other drive as *x*x* formats, this presumes a cd-rw drive. I think you mean, 48x24x48 CD-RW and a 52x CD-ROM. Is the lite-on the CD-ROM or the rewriter? Lite-on's a good make, and that's a good speed RW, so if the RW is the lite-on, thats a good drive. I hope this makes sense:p.

C) Oh, i didn't know about this. I don't see how, but you may be right. However, i'd probably just go with the on RW drive and use it as the cd-rom, or even use the DVD-ROM as the CD-ROM. It seems kinda pointless having a cd-rom, RW,and DVD as well. You would be spending more than you have to as well, and also this fills up all your IDE options which could be usefull later for setting up something like a DVD-RW.

D) Yeah, floppy drives can be picked up really cheap, like $5-10. I don't really see the point of these anymore, with cd-rw's and zip drives, USB drives and the like, but some programs ask for one as a boot disk/recovery disk and also they are useful as O/S boot disks, plus you can transfer data from practically any PC in the world (even ones without CD-ROM drives) back and forth.

I personally have problems with them, they always seem to ce corrupted, but maybe that's just because i use them :D

[Skiing Squirrel]

Yea, I only had to use my floppy for a disk when I first partitioned my harddrive. Havent used it since.

[ArBiTaL 24]

Yeah. So, still good to have it there sometimes, eh?;)

When/if USB becomes intergrated into the BIOS, and/or writingto CD's can be intergrated into the hardware and bios properly, floppys will become obsolete.

I also hope (not related really) that MS's next release of windows will have FULL cd-rw compatability. I know it currently has basic tools built in, but i mean FULL and COMPLETE intergration into the o/s, just like floppies and hard drives do...

[EmTSea19]

I bought a P4 2.53 Processor and the Western Digital 80GB Hard Drive Special Edition. I am probably going to buy a P4PE version Motherboard from Asus.

Yah, floppy drives are pretty much becoming obselete, but I am going to have it just in case. For $8.00, I don't mind it, *lol*.

No, the Lite on has a 52x24x52 CD-RW. It's $70.00 right now with a free T-Shirt at Newegg. Yah, the CD is also 52, I got that wrong before.

[ArBiTaL 24]

Originally posted by EmTSea19

No, the Lite on has a 52x24x52 CD-RW. It's $70.00 right now with a free T-Shirt at Newegg. Yah, the CD is also 52, I got that wrong before.

OMG a 52x24x52 CD-RW???!!!!!:eek: :eek: :drool:

The frustrating thing is, most CD-R's at the moment only go up to 32x, and CD-RW's even less than that.... Also, scratched CD-R's, when attempted to burn to at high speeds, have been known to "explode" in the drive:eek:

[EmTSea19]

Only 32x? *lol* Par for the course I guess. Like 8x AGP or Direct 9.0? Things that are bigger and better, but are not even incorporated into most things we use yet. Maybe that's why a lot of people have broken CD-RW drives.

[GooGobbler]

Alright, you don't need a 52x CD-ROM if you are already getting a fast CD-RW. Although, TEAC is my favorite make, Lite-On is great also.

I am able to burn 16x CD-Rs at 40x...

About the floppy drive. Their futility is still exceptionally high, although slowly degrading. For instance, I use them all the time bringing Word documents back and forth between my computer and my school's library's computers. Mt. Rainer...eh. However, I am beginning to simply upload documents to web space and download the documents at school.

[ArBiTaL 24]

Yea, and also the new USB drives are really the was forward now.
Of course, the cost of floppies is what- $5 for a box of 10?
A lot cheaper than these USB drives. Of course, when the drives come down in price, and BIOS's start to accept USB... say goodbye to floppies! however, i reckon this is at least 4-5, if not more, years away yet. Almost every PC in existance has a floppy drice, and almost every PC user has used/uses/still keeps files on a floppy. It's like VHS vs DVD- a lot of people have tape, and it's cheaper, but it's only a matter of time.....

About running low speed cd-r's fast- you CAN do it, but it can cause all sorts of problems, from corrupted disks, to exploding disks, to damaged drives.

IMHO, best keep in spec. What's a couple of minutes afterall?

[EmTSea19]

You can buy a 50 pack of floppy's for $11.00 online, and you can get a good deal on them at Costco too.

I guess I'll save myself a few dollars and only get a CD-RW drive. I think I'll save even more and get the 48x and not the 52x too.

[GooGobbler]

Yes, evidently you can burn them faster than they are rated, but it is not as dangerous as most would think, unless you are attempting to burn a 2x disc at 52x.

[ArBiTaL 24]

Originally posted by EmTSea19
You can buy a 50 pack of floppy's for $11.00 online, and you can get a good deal on them at Costco too.

I guess I'll save myself a few dollars and only get a CD-RW drive. I think I'll save even more and get the 48x and not the 52x too.

good idea, there's not a lot in it anyway, even if you COULD run 32x at 52, what's in it? a few seconds? half a minute? bah! :)

Be sure to get a floppy though; at least for the time being ;)