What Is the Purpose of Jumpers On an IDE Hard Drive?
Jumpers on IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics) hard drives are so small they might seem insignificant. Their purpose, though, is very important to the correct operation of an IDE hard drive.DefinitionJumpers are little plastic cases that go over sets of two small pins on the back of an IDE hard drive.FunctionThe jumpers tell the hard drive what order it is among the other IDE devices in the computer.OptionsJumpers can signify if the drive is a master or a slave.ConsiderationsA master drive is the first one in a sequence of drives that are connected on the same IDE cable. The master is also the hard drive that the operating system is booted off of, while the slave is the second drive in sequence.BenefitsThe order of IDE devices is important so the computer knows what drive to boot off of and how to communicate with the drives correctly.
IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics) hard drives have 6, 8 or 10 pins on the drive, which have may jumpers installed on them to determine how the drive will be accessed by the computer system; these jumpers are typically referred to as “drive select jumpers”. Improperly set jumpers can keep the computer from booting up or running the programs installed on it. If these jumpers are not set correctly the computer will not know which drive to look for programs, data or even the operating system.
