4-8 Using Tools and Utilities
Primary and Secondary IDE
The Primary and Secondary IDE Master and Slave settings
control the following types of devices:
hard disk drives
CD-ROM readers
Zip drives
tape backup units.
Your computer comes with the hard disk drive (drive C:)
configured as the “Primary IDE Master.” The system can
support up to four physical IDE drives (two on each
PCI/IDE connector). Choices include:
Primary Master
Primary Slave
Secondary Master
Secondary Slave.
The default setting for any installed IDE device is the device
type. The default setting if no device is installed is “None.”
!
CAUTION
When set to Auto Detected, the BIOS detects what
the drive is capable of, not the translation
mechanism that was used to format the drive.
If a drive is run in a mode other than the mode in
which it was partitioned and formatted,
unpredictable results may occur, including data loss.