IDE order for WD HDD

[gerald_weigel]

I was talking to my dad the other day about computers, cuz he was having problems with his, and he mention something to me that didn't sound right.

He told me that when he installed a second hard drive to his pc, in order for the HDD to be the master it had to be plugged into the middle plugin on the IDE cable. He got a western digital hard drive (40 GB I think), and he claimed that's what the instructions told him to do.

When I installed my HDD the master had to be plugged into the end plug, and the slave plugged into the middle, which is why it sounded strange to me. Any ideas?

[ragtop]

In cable select mode, WD drives will work the same as any other drive (master is the end (black) connector and slave is the middle (gray) connector).

WD drives are a bit different from other drives in that you can't jumper a drive as "master" unless there's also a "slave" drive on the cable (if you do, the drive won't be recognized in BIOS). If you are only using one drive on a cable, you have to jumper it for "cable select", or as "single".