Tom's Hardware > Forum > CPU & Components > Other Components > [Solved] How to reset a sata drive as a master drive

[Solved] How to reset a sata drive as a master drive

Forum CPU & Components : Other Components - [Solved] How to reset a sata drive as a master drive

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Best answer from ulysses35.

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suhasmishra   09-27-2009 at 05:37:17 PM

I had an external hard disk and i installed an XP on it, and unplugged it. then when i restarted my pc, it said no drive found. then i checked the bios, it shows the hard disk as third ide master, but not as the primary master. Now how do i reset my internal hard drive of my pc as the primary master. I have a SATA drive and its not having any provision for making it a master or slave, there are no pins visible at the back. any ideas..what should i do..??

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Best answer from ulysses35
SATA drives do not have slave / master settings - and the order of boot / discovery is down to which SATA port they are connected to.

IDE drives on the other hand are slightly different. IDE cables can support 2 x drives each - te first one being the master and the second being the slave.

Your mobo will have two IDE ports and at the moment your drive is in the second one as a slave. Change the mobo socket it is connected to and also chaneg the small jumper on the back of the drive - it should have a diagram on the side to show which two pins you need to "short" to make it master
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Bronze CPUs badge ulysses35   09-27-2009 at 07:23:57 PM
Best answer

SATA drives do not have slave / master settings - and the order of boot / discovery is down to which SATA port they are connected to.

IDE drives on the other hand are slightly different. IDE cables can support 2 x drives each - te first one being the master and the second being the slave.

Your mobo will have two IDE ports and at the moment your drive is in the second one as a slave. Change the mobo socket it is connected to and also chaneg the small jumper on the back of the drive - it should have a diagram on the side to show which two pins you need to "short" to make it master

Reply to ulysses35
Kari   09-27-2009 at 08:34:37 PM

also check the 'boot order' in Bios, you might or might not be able to set the external drive as a first boot device

Reply to Kari
suhasmishra   10-07-2009 at 03:17:50 PM

suhasmishra wrote :

I had an external hard disk and i installed an XP on it, and unplugged it. then when i restarted my pc, it said no drive found. then i checked the bios, it shows the hard disk as third ide master, but not as the primary master. Now how do i reset my internal hard drive of my pc as the primary master. I have a SATA drive and its not having any provision for making it a master or slave, there are no pins visible at the back. any ideas..what should i do..??



Hi, I tried the way you said, I could restart my hard drive, i removed the SATA and put in the IDE drive, then i installed the XP operating system, updated to SP3, after that i decided to put the SATA drive as the slave, but as soon as i connected it, my computer doesnot even boot now. My question is will the pc behave in a absurd manner if i connect a IDE drive with a roudn pin power cable and connect a SATA drive with a SATA power cable, will this kind of a connection make the pc unstable, or bust the power supply or something like that. The pc just doesnot want to start even after remove the SATA drive. Any ideas..! where did i go wrong..???

Reply to suhasmishra
o1die   10-07-2009 at 03:33:56 PM

I use maxblast for my maxtor hardrives. The cd can be used as a bootdisk. It allows you to choose how to setup a new drive with your primary hardrive, or make an exact copy.

Reply to o1die
Bronze CPUs badge ulysses35   10-08-2009 at 10:00:34 AM

Check in the BIOS on your HDD settings. I tend to leave mine as "AUTO" if you have IDE and SATA devies connected to the mobo.

Which motherboard do you have ? I know from past experience that you usually have three options

AUTO / AHCI / IDE - if you leave it set to auto you should be fine

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