Swapping Master and Slave Drives

[carln]

Hey guys,

I currently have two hard disks one running as a master and the other running as a slave. I want to swap the drives because the one thats currently used as a slave is newer, bigger and faster than the master. I will then reformat the new drive and install windows on it.

My question is quite simple I know how to change the jumper settings on the two hard drives, but is it necessary to swap the cables. They both share the same IDE channel, so do the two spurs off the cable have the same configuration or is one specifically for the master and one for the slave.

Thanks in advance for the help.

 

[HammerBot]

As long as you have two drives on the cable you don't need to swap their position. Simple change the jumpers.

FYI: If you only have one drive, it should be placed on the last connector on the cable. I.e. the middle connector is unused.


<i><b>Engineering is the fine art of making what you want from things you can get</b></i>

 

[carln]

Thanks for the info. That's just what I needed to know.

Does anybody know of a decent hard disk benchmarking tool that I can use before and after the swap to get an indication of any improvement.

 

[HammerBot]

As long as you only compare the results with results from the same benchmark program, you can use pretty much any you can find. Different benchmark program have different ways of testing, so you shouldn't compare those numbers.
I don't know of any tool that I can recommend. But HDTach and Atto seems to be used frequently in official benchmark tests.
Also you may want to read some recent HD test to get an idea of what benchmarks tools are recent and reliable.

<i><b>Engineering is the fine art of making what you want from things you can get</b></i>

 

[sjonnie]

You mean you can have the master in the middle position? Whilst this is possible it is not recommended. The master should be on the end of the cable. The reason is all commands sent from the controller are picked up by both drives, the master drive determines when the slave can use the channel. If the master is in the middle, signal reflection from the drive on the end of the cable can interefere with the channel and make the master think it is busy when it is not.

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[HammerBot]

There are no signal reflections if both drives are mounted. As I said, if both drives are mounted it doesn't matter where they are placed. If you only have one drive (a master), it should be at the end of the cable.

FYI: The master drive doesn't determine when the slave can use the channel. The master/slave terms are actually quite confusing. Normally master/slave bus-terms are used to destinguish between devices that drives data (masters) and devices that receive data (slaves). In that case both drives (and the controller) can both be masters and slaves. But obviously only one devices at a time can drive data.
The master/slave term for IDE device simply refer to their address. Each drive is addressed with a single bit in the command word and only the drive that recognises the address responds.

<i><b>Engineering is the fine art of making what you want from things you can get</b></i>