[techtalk] Installing Linux on a second hard drive.

[jenn at simegen.com]

The Cat In The Hat wrote:
> 
> The CD-Rom is the secondary slave because of where it is on the cable.  You want your new hard drive to be the primary slave in the system. You do not want to move you CD-Rom to the Primary slave position.  The position it is currently in is actually the best for future upgrades and additions of hard drives.


Actually, to my knowledge the location on the cable is irrelevent. The
Cat is correct in saying it's a hardware issue, though. (it's not Linux,
it's the way EISA PCs are built.)

Drives connected to one of the ports on the IDE card (or section of the
motherboard) are primary. If their jumper is set to master, they're
master. If their jumper is set to slave, they're slave. These terms
could as easily be 'A' and 'B' or 'banana' and 'pear' - arbitrary terms.

Drives connected to the other port on the IDE card are secondary. Same
jumper settings.

I was unaware of any performance differences based on location, but
someone in the thread mentioned that HD slaves of ATAPI devices can
suffer. (or 'pears' where an ATAPI is the 'banana'. Hm. Maybe the terms
aren't quite that arbitrary.)



Jenn V.
-- 
       "Do you ever wonder if there's a whole section of geek culture 
		you miss out on by being a geek?" - Dancer.

jenn at simegen.com        Jenn Vesperman       
http://www.simegen.com/~jenn/