i have lost the jumpers. sorry. but there is still a way through setup ahich i am asking for. doesnyone knows?

Go to the site of the manufacturer,( IE Western Digital), and look in thier 'support' areas for instructions for master/slave settings.

There is no way through setup to do this. The drives must be configured for Master/Slave/Cable select prior to being installed into the PC.

The jumpers are on the back of the drive and if you have lost the little plastic "thingamys" you can likely get replacements from a PC store. The jumper arrangement is usually displayed on a lable on the drive.

You might get lucky - on some drives when the jumpers are gone the drives default to "cable select". So the drives would be slave and master in the order they were attached to the ide cable.

If you can't get cable select to work, just grab some new terminator jumpers.

They go by several names, usually mini 2 pin terminators or mini hard drive jumper blocks. If you don't have a LARGER computer store near you, should be able to find on the web, like here:

http://www.directron.com/terminator.html

All I can suggest is go back to the store where you bought it , hoefully a PC store, or purchase them from the manufacturers website or perhaps even radio shack may have something you can use. If there is a computer show in your area they would have them also.

i want my master to be slave because it doesnt load since bootscreen problem. Since it is master, it loads even when slave is connected. What i want to do is load slave as master and master as slave so i could change the bootscreen file on the master. I have all of my files on that which i have been working on from last 2 months. I am really pissed that made a big mistake, changed f'n bootscreen.

Have you actually checked on the back of the drives for these jumpers?

If you have NO jumpers on either drive then I would suspect that you have the drives working in cable select mode... in which case all you need to do to switch Master/Slave is to connect them to the IDE cable in the reverse order they are currently in.

But.... if this drive which is now faulty is the Master - that means it is the boot drive? That drive has the O/S and everything that is needed to boot the system right? SO how is switching the current slave to the master drive going to help any?

I feel I need a little bit more information... as what you have now said doesn;t seem to make all that much sense to me (of course... it could very well be me).

Yes, you can change the master and the slave in the BIOS screen. I'm not sure which mother board you're using but I do it all the time and never have to change the jumpers. Go though the BIOS.
Good Luck,
Eric

ericd2003, i know you can do it through BIOS, but my question is how?

Liam Vegas, i have tried switching cables but the master still loads no matter which cable it is hooked too. I guess i will have to restore the working drive with master cable so it become master and so hpefully it might fix the problem

Don't want to hijack your thread, but I have five firewire enclosures from different manufacturers strung together and have just begun having a fit getting them all to come up and stay up-- Ideally, what should all their master/slave designations be-- given they are all being chained together from a single sixpin 1394a port. Master for the first, then the rest designated as slaves? And what if one of them is an external ACOM data drive that came preconfigured (as a master?).

thanks,

bt

These drives are all <inside> their own external drive enclosure? Then they each should be set to Master. This master/slave thing really doesn't apply in this case as that is only relevant when you have multiple IDE devices connected to the same IDE controller cable.

So... something else is causing your problem here. I generally don't run more than a couple of firewire drives strung together... but maybe that is just me. If you have multiple ports on your firewire card/system I would run at least a couple of "chains" from different ports rather than run one continuos line from just one port.

The suggestion earler about the BIOS setting is also very important. You need to get into the BIOS in order to tell the system which drive should be the boot drive. Usually you define the order as well... First the floppy, next the CD-ROm, and next the hard drives. The system will attempt to boot up in the order in which this is defined in the bios.

ok i will tyr the biso setup. Thanks

Thanks guys. it worked through Bios. i feel so relived after getting my work back. Thanks.

You originally said you lost the terminator (connector) on the drive. You can stand on your head until you turn blue and fiddle all you want in BIOS if the terminator block is missing (depends on drive) or set to be master when you want slave or the other way around nothing is going to change.

You can go to any number of sites that show the proper jumper position for your drive. It varies depending on make, even model.

1. Are there any terminator blocks on this drive now?

2. If so, have you use a toothpick/tiny screwdriver to free it?

3. If it doesn't say on the label of the drive where to put it for the configuration you want check some web site that has the specs.

You need to do the following IN ORDER.

a. set the drive to master or slave PHYSICALLY with the terninator.
b. Go into BIOS and pick AUTO if you see that option, then master or slave.
c. reboot.

BillyBoy, i guess u didnt read my post on 1/9/2005 at 1:57:15 PM:Thanks guys. it worked through Bios. i feel so relived after getting my work back. Thanks.