What does the whole slave, master drive thing mean?
2007-07-30 19:47:23 · 2 answers · asked by Anonymous in Computers & Internet ➔ Hardware ➔ Other - Hardware
Its basically a way of "bootstrapping" two drives into a computer. Back in the old days, computers only has one hard drive, and no CD-ROM drive. The Master / Slave is a way of putting two drives on the same controller, instead of having to buy a whole new controller for each drive.
2007-07-30 19:53:03 · answer #1 · answered by ? 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
each computer has two IDE channels (grey ribbon cables) these are known as the primary and the secondary and are numbered 0 and 1
Each of these IDE channel / cable can take two devices they are known as master and slave
You can only have one master and one slave on each cable
The reason for this was to establish a priority / pecking order e.g. you may have 4 harddrives on your computer your computer needs to know which one to boot from - this would be the primary master i.e. the master device on the primary channel
2007-07-31 02:54:59 · answer #2 · answered by cool_clearwater 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋