What is Master and Slave Hard disks?

Answer 1

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You could have more than one Hard disks in your computer at a time. For eg. consider you have two harddisks at a time. Then there would be a conflict for the computer to choose from which hard disk it has to start the OS.

For this there is a set of pins present in every hard disk. You could use a jumper to select a pin, so that to specify the computer whether the disk is a master or slave. The hard disk, which is made to be a master is chosen by the computer for booting the OS.

For further Informations go to the below link.

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/confJumpering-c.html

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Vasu M
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Answer 2

Each IDE/ATA channel can support either one or two devices. IDE/ATA devices of course each contain their own integrated controllers, and so in order to maintain order on the channel, it is necessary to have some way of differentiating between the two devices. This is done by giving each device a designation as either master or slave, and then having the controller address commands and data to either one or the other. The drive that is the target of the command responds to it, and the other one ignores the command, remaining silent.

Note that despite the hierarchical-sounding names of "master" and "slave", the master drive does not have any special status compared to the slave one; they are really equals in most respects. The slave drive doesn't rely on the master drive for its operation or anything like that, despite the names (which are poorly-chosen--in the standards the master is usually just "drive 0" and the slave "drive 1"). The only practical difference between master and slave is that the PC considers the master "first" and the slave "second" in general terms. For example, DOS/Windows will assign drive letters to the master drive before the slave drive. If you have a master and slave on the primary IDE channel and each has only one regular, primary partition, the master will be "C:" and the slave "D:". This means that the master drive (on the primary channel) is the one that is booted, and not the slave.

Answer 3

Master is that we can boot the system with that the system motherboard will detect the master first and the slave after

at the time of booting master is used as IDE0 and slave is used as IDE1
for that you need to do the jumper settings on your hard drive like it is printed on the hard drive sticker ok
we can connect two hard drives on a single cable after that jumper settings

Note: dont put the jumpers same to both the hard drives while connecting it on a single cable
make one hard drive as Master and another as Slave
u can learn it from the hard drive sticker


bye take care

Answer 4

When you want to attach 2 hard disks to a computer, the resources of computer are needed to be alloted separately to each of it in order to avoid conflict and keep both hard disks on running. This conflict is resolved through setting one hard-disk as Primary or Master and secondary hard disk as Slave. This is a two step game:

1. Setting jumper positions at the back end of a hard disk.
2. Deploying proper data cable to a hard disk.

Answer 5

When you have two harddisks connected to the same other board and processor, one is made the master and the second one is made the slave.

There cannot be two master HDs at teh same time as the mother board should know which hard disk to use during boot up.

Answer 6

A master drive is the hard drive your computer boots from a slave drive is a secondary drive that you can store more stuff on.

Answer 7

The one that boot up or rather start up when you on your PC is the master hard disks which is the "C" drive.

Answer 8

Master HDD is from where your PC is booting and salve is the second HDD. There cannot be two master otherwise system would not boot.

Answer 9

Another one of those things we tolerate when it should have been abolished years ago... one day people will look back on us and say, "God, those americans were freekin sick people."

Answer 10

its depend on the the fuse wire position.