[zeldazme]

When setting up computer, what is the order of the devices
The hard drive is primary master but I don't know what order to install the other three drives. I have a DVD Rom drive, a CD-RW drive and an internal Iomega Zip drive and don't know what should be primary slave, secondary master and secondary slave. Could someone help me? :confused:

[NeedKarma]

The order isn't really all that important other than the boot drive being the Primary Master. Since most PC cases have the hard drive bays (3.5") near each other and the CD/DVD (5.25") bays near each other you will most often find the hard drives on the Master IDE cable and the CD/DVD drives on the Secondary cable simply because that's the easiest way to fit in the connectors.

Hope this helps.

[fredg]

Hi,
Look at the back of the CD-ROM drive, and the back of the CD-RW drive.
One will have to have the "pin" set at the Master, the other set at "Slave".
You then set, in the BIOS, the Master to be the Primary.
The boot sequence order normally reads like:
Floppy drive first, cd-rom second, then the cd-rw drive next.
Happy New Year,
fredg

[Saker]

It doesn't matter at all as long as you have set the primary boot drive in bios.

To squeeze performance from your machine I would recommend having the following:
Primary master - DVD drive
Primary slave - hdd
Secondary master - CD-RW
Secondary slave - zip drive

That way the cd drive you are most likely to be using to write from the hdd is on the opposite channel to it so not having to use a single channel for both at the same time. Also if you were writing from the dvd to the CD then they would be using separate channels, etc.

Good point fredg, make sure the jumpers on the back of the devices are set accordingly to master or slave. Easy to forget to do that.