What is a Master/Slave Relationship?
Master/slave technology is part of the legacy Parallel ATA (PATA) standard. ATA stands for Advanced Technology Attachment and is with us today in a newer serial flavor known as Serial ATA or SATA. The newer standard has many advantages over the master/slave setup of PATA; however, PATA is still in wide use in older systems. The master/slave relationship is part of a transmission protocol that bridges communication between a hard disk and the motherboard it’s attached to. In a master/slave setup, a flat, wide parallel cable runs from an interface on the motherboard to the hard drive(s). Each parallel cable has two female ports to accommodate up to two drives. The primary port connects to the master drive, the secondary port to a slave drive. The master drive is the boot drive. When installing two PATA drives on a single parallel cable, each drive must be configured with a jumper to designate it as the primary or secondary drive, master or slave. Failure to set the jumpers will prevent t
