[flyhigh37]

alright, so I have seen alot about this in bits and pieces, but never in an entire and understandable layout. Would someone be so kind as to explain the level of difficulty in installing a new HD as the MASTER. I have the factory installed 5400rpm 20gig and am looking to install a 30gig 7200. Obviously (i believe) I would like the 7200 as the master, but am unsure as to how I would go about installing all the necessary system software, as well as the actually wiring. Any help is appreciated!

[spicyjeff]

All you have to to is turn your machine off, open it up, switch the jumper on the current master HD to slave, ad the second HD and chan ge the jumper to master, plug in the power and IDE cable to both, close the box, reboot, run Drive Setup which is part of a standard OS install in the Utilities folder, and format/partition your new drive as "Extended."

The setting to set your new HD to master should be wth the documentation it came with when you bought it or as a label on the drive. For your current HD, there should be a jumper layout label on it or use the manufacturer and drive name to find the jumper layout on the manufacturer's website.

[Richard Pinneau]

Hey, guys...
willing to help a newbie to hardware details?
What is the use of / significance of a drive being Master or Slave?
What can be done with one but not other - esp since the startup can be selected in control panel?
Thanks for pardoning my ignorance?

Does it matter whether the master drive is at the end or the middle of the interface cable?

[Cipher13]

No, it doesn't matter.
I believe the only real difference between master and slave is that master gets priority in traffic, right?
Or something like that?

Cipher13

[Gregory]

IBM has specs on their web site with information on Macs, installation etc. Maxtor probably has same. On PCs at least the Master is suppose to be on the end, and the end black head on the IDE cable has some form of termination. Master? Jumper setting and you can't have a slave by itself. Some older WD and maybe Maxtor had a jumper for "Master-single" (no slave) but that does not seem to apply to today's ATA/100 series.

Priority? Unlikely. And all the drives have dual DSP built-in controllers, 2MB SDRAM, and little overhead, but putting them on separate channels (both Master and both connected directly to PCI IDE card) should provide best performance.

Greg

This reminds me of a funny thing...

I took out the IDE master CD-ROM in my beige G3 tower and replaced it with a DVD-ROM. But I had to set the DVD-ROM to slave for it to work (otherwise the Mac wouldn't start up). So I have only one IDE device connected and it is set to slave! (and it works).

My hard drive is SCSI-3.

Originally posted by spicyjeff:
format/partition your new drive as "Extended."

Don't forget that HFS+ only works with Mac OS 8.1 and above

Before installing a second hard drive in order to install OS X, I asked a guy who kows a lot about mcs and he told me the distinction was mostly for PC, that is to say your mac, concerning hard drives, handles everything. Comment ?

[flyhigh37]

Ok, so could someone please explain the benifits of partitioning a hard drive, and whether or not I need to buy a program to do so (as pc's do). thanks

There is no functional difference between a master and slave ATA drive. The labels imply some type of priority difference but there is actually none. A better distinction would have been A and B. Alas for historical reasons, we have the master and slave nomenclature.

Furthermore, the termination of ATA drives are in the drives themselves not in the cables. The cables are simply that, signal cables with ground shielding (in the case of ATA66/100) cables. Unless the cable is of the cable-select (one cable has an intentional hole punched out) variety, the drive (and motherboard) positions are also arbitrary. I have personally confirmed this on my B&W G3 in the course of experimenting to eliminate the infamous Rev1 ATA data corruption problem. The system will work fine with the motherboard, master, and slave drives connected in any order.

One caveat, however, is that drives from different manufacturers sometimes work better with other manufacturers' drives in either the master or slave position.

[Cipher13]

Benefits of partitioning?
Ok heres just a few - keep your System on one partition, and everything else on the other.
That way if something goes wrong, just format the System partition, and you're set.
Or... have a System on each partition. And use the rest of the space on each for apps and documents.
That way you always have an emergency partition.
It makes it much easier to handle things like that, and emergencies espeically, if you know what I mean...

Cipher13

[Gregory]

Partitioning:

Scratch area. Separate volume for VM swap. You want to defragment a file. You have multiple operating systems.

The first partition (outer tracks) is faster. Put VM or System there. Also will tend to keep it more optimized rather than scattered over 30GB area. (Plan to only use 60% or less).

You will need to backup and reformat until Apple releases a format in place (Drive Setup 2.0?). Drive Setup is fine. I'd say partition, resize partitions, create partitions using 3rd party, but I've had too much trouble with even latest FWB HDT 4.0 to recommend it.

Gregory

[Frederico]

On the subject of partitioning, try this article:

http://sciencequest.org/support/comp...titioning.html

On the subject of ATA installation, I'm amazed at the wealth of misinformation above.

1) it is important to note the difference between IDE and ATA; since the original poster failed to tell us what kind of machine he has, let alone what brand of drives being installed, it's not easy to give specific advice; however:

a) IDE controllers (used in pre-'99/ B&W Macs) use IDE cables, which are 40-pin/40-conductor cables. These cables/controllers require no special assignment of connector to either Master or Slave, and can even be installed "backwards", with the short end of the cable on the MOBO and the long end at the device.

b) ATA-66/100 cables and controllers, on the other hand, *are* connector-dependent, and even though certain ATA controllers don't seem to care (more later), the long end (usually blue in color) *must* go on the MOBO, the short end (usually black) *must* go on the Master or the Single, and the center connector (usually gray but often black on generic/cheap cables) is left for the Slave drive *only*.

These cables are 40-pin/80-conductor, and must be labeled as ATA-66/100 compliant, else should not be used (40/80 cables are used for more than just ATA devices)

c) That leaves the in-between years on Macs, with the G3-B&W (Yosemite) and G4-PCI (Yikes!), which have ATA-33 controllers. Some of these early RevA and RevB machines didn't seem to care about cable connector position for Master/Slave, but they sure as heck cared about the MOBO side. Without the proper ground loop configuration, you *will* see data corruption and poor performance.

These machines came stock with 40/80 cables, and should use 40/80 cables for better data transfer with ATA drives, but can, in both theory and practice, use plain 40/40 cables with *Atapi* or IDE/EIDE devices. However, the cost of a 40/40 vs.. a 40/80 is trivial, so don't skimp unless you're stuck and not selling it off to someone else.

2) All early B&W G3s do *NOT* (officially) support DCP/DSP or Cable Select, and therefore many drives (such as the IBM GXP series; the Seagate Barracuda ATA-66 series; more) do indeed have a configuration know as 'Master with Slave Present' which must be used to prevent priority conflicts, performance-hits in twin-drive configs.

I have, to date, been unable to find any documentation which clarifies that any later G3 and G4 models, all the way to today's G4 MP Macs, support DCP/DSP, and therefore should also be configured as 'Master with Slave Present' when used as a master in a Master/Slave config; else should be configured as Master (Single) when used as a single drive. The good news is, even without confirmation, that setting is safe to use regardless of known support.

3) There is one of three settings a drive can have in a Mac:

Master (Single)
Master (with Slave)
Slave

Not all drives/devices require a 'Master with Slave' setting in a dual drive config (such as many Atapi CD/DVD-R/RW, Atapi Zips, etc.), but many do, so if you're not sure, go to the manufacturer's website and *READ CAREFULLY*. Remember, if an option to use a 'Master with Slave' setting is available (and you indeed have a Slave to go with the Master), don't hesitate to use it; it won't hurt, and it's better that not, which will if it's a problem.

4) As one sharp person noted above, there is *NO* priority given to a Master over a Slave on the same Bus/controller; *however*, the EIDE/ATA protocol will produce a faster drive to drive transfer rate from a Master or a Slave to another Master or Slave on two separate EIDE/ATA Busses/controllers.

Thus, if your need is to move data between two hard drives at an optimal rate, you should *not* place both drives on the same Bus/controller as Master and Slave; you should instead place each as Master (or Slave) on two separate busses, and relegate your slower devices (like your CD/DVD-ROM drive, Zip, etc.) to the second device on each chain; or, alternatively, you should install a PCI-ATA controller which offers additional busses to create the higher speeds.

5) ATA devices (typically only hard drives) in Macs should not be placed on a cable that exceeds 18" in length; further, the shorter the better. Unlike SCSI (which can go as many as 9 or more meters in cable distance), ATA has a very weak signal strength which can degrade rapidly over distance, leading to slower transfer rates and eventually data corruption.

Atapi devices, as well as EIDE/IDE devices (such as CD/DVD-ROMs, Zips, CD-R/W, Orb, etc.) may go as far as 30", and even 40" or more in many cases. However, again, the shorter the better.

However, it must be noted that one may make a custom ATA-66/100 (40/80) cable that hosts an ATA hard drive as close as three inches from the MOBO; ergo, one may then place an Atapi device (such as the stock CD/DVD-ROM and Zip) at a distance of another 30" beyond that, so one can make custom cable that allows for two-drive/two-bus high transfer rates (as noted above) and still host the secondary devices in their stock positions on the stock controllers without burning a PCI slot.

The new G4-MPs make this more difficult, because the moved the second controller (Bus 1) to the front of the MOBO, but you can still keep the cable length under 18" to the HDD and then loop up to the Zip without exceeding another 15".

Please note: in this type of config, the two HDDs will be Slaves as dictated by being the device on the center of the cable (assuming two devices per chain) and the CD/Zip ends up as Master on the cable ends.

You can have such cables made to spec at any custom cable house.

6) All drive ribbon cables, be they SCSI, IDE, ATA or whatever, have a positive (lead) pin noted by the red stripe on the edge of the cable. Usually, the connectors are keyed to prevent them from being installed backwards, but this is not always the case, so, lacking such an "idiot key", be sure to verify that pin one meets with conductor one.

Well, I think that's it, if you have specific drive config questions, feel free to write after trying hard on your own, please).

HTH

------------------
Frederico
[email protected]
Public Mac Support