Checking the IDE Hard Disk Drive Jumpers

IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics) hard disk drives have jumpers that must be set for the drive to work properly with your computer. The jumpers tell the computer whether you are using one hard disk drive or two. If you purchased your system with a hard disk drive already installed, these jumpers have been set for you. You may need to change the jumper settings if you install or remove a hard disk drive.

Note

You do not need to set these jumpers if you are removing your only hard disk drive.

Check the jumper settings if you are doing any of the following:D Installing your first hard disk drive0Removing one hard disk drive and leaving another in your computer0 Installing a second hard disk drive.

See the documentation that came with your hard disk drive for the proper settings. If you install two hard disk drives in your system, you must change the jumper settings on each drive to indicate which drive is the master (primary) drive and which is the slave (secondary) drive.

A master drive is the drive on which you’ll install the operating system that the computer loads into its memory each time you turn it on. You can run application programs and store data on both the master and slave drive, but the operating system must be contained on the master drive.

4-4 Installing and Removing Drives