Secondary Slave Connection

Hi,

I'm trying to install a secondary hard drive on my etower. Since it's an emachine, it doesn't have a slave connection on its hard disk data cable. So i have to connect it over the CD-ROM as secondary slave. The jumper i used doesn't originally belong to this harddrive and is slightly longer than the original one (i dont know where the original one is). I connected the data, power and jumper correctly yet the BIOS doesn't detect it in auto. Nor does Windows. Is it wrong to slave over a CD-ROM or is it the jumper? Or do i have to remove the Cable Select jumper?

You should only have one jumper on the drive to configure for its role in the IDE channel.

If your second drive will be a slave, the first drive on the cable must be configured to master (set the jumper).

If your original hard drive is on IDE1 and the CD is on IDE2, leave the CD configured as it was originally configured. Swap the cables in the IDE so that IDE1 has the cable with two connectors. Set the jumper on Drive 1 to master and the jumper on your new drive to slave. Or, make them both cable select. If the system won't work with the drives configured to cable select, then your system won't support that and you will have to go back to Master/Slave.

From your description, it sounds like you may have a jumper in the cable select position, and you are adding a jumper to the slave position. You can only choose one mode of operation on the drives with the jumper, thus needing only one jumper per drive.

As for the jumper, as long as it shorts the intended pins, that is all that is required.

The CD doesn't care what IDE cable it has.

The only limitation you may have here is that the IDE cable length may pose a challenge in reaching the drive bays.

I'd also point out that having a hard drive as slave to a CD ROM is not the most efficient setup. I would recommend that you do as rapier has said and swap the cables from IDE2 (CD ROM) to IDE1 (HD) and have both HD's on IDE1. Also if your secondary drive is faster than your primary drive you may wish to switch those around too e.g. if HD2spins at 7200rpm and HD1 spins at 5400rpm it would be better to have HD2 as the master and HD1 as slave.

Z

searched google and got this... secondary slave connection
hope this helps ya out

/scriptkiddie18

NetKill -
Just curious - what are the specs on your etower? I only ask because I've been doing some work on a couple of different emachine systems lately.
Aside from switching your IDE cables and using the correct Master/Slave jumper settings, you might want to make sure your power supply is going to be able to carry the extra load from the additional drive. Designation of a drive as either master or slave is generally determined by jumper configuration, not by the order in which it is daisy-chained to the other drive. The only exception is if the drive is jumpered "cable select", and both the system and ribbon cable support cable select. In this case, master and slave is determined by the position on the data ribbon cable. Depending how the system controls the cable select line on the ribbon cable determines where the master and slave need to be attached. You'll need to refer to your system users manual for more information.

V.

A couple of the older models of Emachines hd jumpers on the motherboard that you had to enable to allow another hard drive to run in the system. (This was to stop people from modifying their E-Machines)