Hey guys, Im just messing around with my PC trying to kill some time and noticed that my HDD's (I have 2 of them, one 120GB and one 60GB) are set as 'secondary master' and 'secondary slave'. My DVD and CD burner (two separate drives) are set as 'primary master' and 'primary slave.

My question was, Should the HDD's be set to 'primary master + slave' and my disc drives set to 'secondary master + slave'? If I were to swap them around (I have no probs doing this) would my PC benefit from it in any ways? Or should I just leave it be?

Cheers :thumbsup

nugget23

Number 1 rule with computers: If it isn't broken don't fix it! Your PC doesn't seem to be having any problems and your bios is capable of starting from the secondary master, if it bugs you too much change it all around before your next format.

It doesn't matter.

Like Tom said - don't fix what ain't broken

As a side note - you can end up screwing your OS (Windows) by playing around removing/changing hard-drives. Only do it if you plan on reinstalling your machine to be on the safe side.

:: Thats my problem, I cant leave things alone!!

Cheers for the info guys, im gonna try and restrain myself. If im not around for a few days then you'll know whats happened

Haha, Ive run out of space... I have my 52x CD-RW burner, DVD burner (Dunno what speed, bought it a week ago) on the secondary, and a corrupted 30G Seagate drive and brand new 80G WD drive on the primary. I dont think it makes much difference where it is... people just like to have it all neat and run the hard drives on the primary ide channel. Did you put your computer together? How did you come about noticing this, were you pulling it apart or BIOS?

i found a program called HWiNFO32, and thought id have a look.



You cant change any settings with it, it just shows you whats what with your PC.

If anyone is interested in it, lemme know. Its only a couple MB in size.

EDIT: No, I bought it pre-made and was ripped off royally

But I installed another 256MB RAM, a DVD-RW and a 120GB HDD to go with my 80GB one myself. I only just noticed that the HDD's were this way. Its probably my own fault, cos the 80BG crapped itself a few months ago (its a few yrs old) and i had to reinstall everything on the 120GB.

Is it like SiSoft sandra? I know everything thats in my pc.. im a puter nut, I built it all. Im glad I did too, the old P3 was getting old... now Ive worked my up and everything in the PC is up to date, P4, 512mb PC3200, brand new mobo... new hard drive and dvd burner.. comps worth alot more money now too

meh, Ive only got a celeron 2.4 with 512MB ram and a 128MB radeon 9200SE Game Buster (which i installed myself too by the way). You should see me trying to play games (celerons arent the best for games im sure you know), getting pissed and shouting at the computer like it could hear me ::

IDE is an asynchronous (cannot transmit/receive at the same time) bus, therefore running multiple devices on it in "primary" or "secondary" make no difference.

Technically if using "cable-select" to select Primary and Secondary the device located closest on the cable to the motherboard connecter (i.e. the middle connector, not the end connectors on the cable) has the ability to respond 0.00005 of a second faster than the device on the "end" connector of the cable.

(That value is based on the time it takes electricity at the speed of light to travel 10cm, it's not 100% accurate because resistance to electrons is involved, but it's closest than you'll get without a lab to work it out).

SATA on the other hand (new form of IDE, kind've) is Synchronous, which means it can transmit and receive at the same time, but it uses a different type of cabling to do so. (Pure, please correct me if I'm wrong, haven't worked much with SATA).

My CPU is still old though.. only upgraded the mobo and ram. The CPU is a Williamette P4 1.7Ghz.. overclocked to 2.1Ghz. It would probably give your celery a run for its money in gaming.. the P4's are really decent, even the slower older ones. I went to the pc shop to pick up a CPU and mobo.. and the idiots gave me a Celeron D 2.53Ghz CPU which was Socket 775, and a Socket 478 Mobo.. so I just took the CPU back. This CPU is still decent enough for most good games. I blew up my GeForce 4 a few weeks ago, so Im on onboard video. Im saving all my money for my grow op, so the pc will have to do as is.

If you realy want to know why it is set like that look up your motherboard and HDD manufacturers webpages and find the manuals for the models you have and any forums they might have and read read read. Then read some more and then stop and think about what you are doing. Then read some more. Finally ask the manufacturers through their email support and read that too.

Ive never seen any drives setup this way... doubt anything would have come from the manufacturers in this configuration.