When to use “cable select” or Master and Slave drive selectors
Question:
I have multiple drives on the same drive cable.
Is it OK to have both of these units on Cable Select or should the “end unit” be the master?
Answer:
The master drive should be the device that processes the most data. (For example, if you have a hard drive and a DVD drive on the same cable, make sure your hard drive is the master drive and the DVD is the slave drive.)
Apart from that requirement, cable select will work fine on a computer with BIOS that supports it. Some PCs aren’t very smart with cable selection, and in those cases you’ll have to assign the master and slave designation manually.
An easy way to check to see if your computer supports “cable select” is to set the drives for cable select and boot your PC. If, in the BIOS, you can see both drives appear automatically, then cable select works. If you don’t see both drives appear, you’ll have to not use cable select – set them manually. (Don’t do this with drives containing important information, as you may lose data in one or both.)
