How to Slave a Hard Drive to a Computer
When connecting two hard drives into the same system, slaving one drive can be useful for secondary storage or hard drive recovery. The slave setting is selected by placing a jumper on in a specified location on the back of the hard drive. The jumper is a small rectangular piece of metal that basically shorts two connectors, letting the system know that the drive is a slave or master. Only Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE) hard drives have a slave/master system, whereas Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) drives, which are also common, do not. IDE and SATA drives differ in their connectors. If the data cable on the back of the drive is a ribbon (flat, long) ending in a wide connector, the drive is IDE.
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Things You'll Need
- Nonmagnetized phillips-head screwdriver
- Hard drive jumper
- Desktop computer with IDE hard drive
Instructions
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1
Unplug the computer to prevent electric shock, then remove both side panels of the computer by removing the screws on the back of the computer on both the left and right edge. Slide the panels toward the rear of the computer to remove them.
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2
The white connector pictured is a power cable for the hard drive. Disconnect the power and data cables from the back of the hard drive so that you have enough room to remove the hard drive. The hard drive is normally located toward the bottom front of the computer. The power cable is white and rectangularly shaped, while the data cable is a flat ribbon cable with a wide, rectangular connector.
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3
Unscrew the hard drive you want to slave from the computer case. There are four screws, two on each side, that hold the hard drive to the case.
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4
Place the jumper in the slave position on the hard drive. Refer to the diagram on the label of the hard drive for the specific placement of the jumper, as placement differs between manufacturers.
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5
Screw the hard drive back to the case and connect the data and power cables to the back of the drive. The IDE cable has three connectors: one that connects to the motherboard, one that is set to master, which is the connector on the other end of the cable, and one that is set to slave, which is the connector in between the two end connectors. Connect the slave connector to the hard drive.
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Close the case and plug the computer back in.
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Tips & Warnings
Connecting two drives in master with a single IDE cable will result in the drive with the master connector booting first. The other drive may or may not be accessible. If you use two drive in master with separate IDE cables, the computer will boot one of the drives based on its pre-programmed boot priority. If you have two drives in slave, but no master, assuming the drives are not bootable (drives that have an operating system installed on them), nothing will happen because neither drive is bootable. If one drive is bootable, but both are set in slave, the drive may or may not boot.
References
- Photo Credit bare oem hard drive image by davidcrehner from Fotolia.com SATA power connector. Close up. Isolated on a white background. image by Andrey Khritin from Fotolia.com
