External HDD, Master/Slave????

[Wagon_Wheel]

Hey dudes,
Just bought an external HDD for my dad for his bday, and no where in the instructions does it say what to set the hdd as, master or slave or cable select, or dont put the bridge pin thing on at all?

Its SATA & USB by the way

Cheers,
Geoff

[Astranomical]

If its a SATA HDD, you shouldn't have to worry about it.

[AttaBoy]

Just plug n' play.

[TWOJZ]

lol, there's nothing to set on a SATA drive.

it is a tad worrying that you have asked this.

[Ra1d]

wtf would it be a tad worrying...

usb should be just plug n play, but if you want to use sata depends if your mobo has an external sata hotplug. it will be a little port on the back saying eSata. only advantage of using sata is a quicker transfer rate pretty much

[azkwazere]

only advantage of using sata is a quicker transfer rate pretty much

the ONLY advantage? lol... what more do you want other than good transfer speeds?

lol....

yeah, if its usb you dont need to worry about m/s/cs... sata doesnt use multi chanel systems like IDE anyway. With IDE, you can have multiple devices off a single channel. Say, 2 CD roms or 2 hard drives and have one as the master of the channel and the other as the slave. This can be done using the jumper (master/slave) or you can use cable select which assigns the positions using the cable location.

SATA uses more physical channels and only allows one device per channel. That being said, SATA allows more communication between each SATA channel for use of things like RAID and Striping.

Back to the point, external HDD's are *usually* normal internal HDD's with a special case which converts power from 4-rail 12v to AC 240 and a bridge connector which migrates SATA to USB.

When plugged in, your USB Host adapter will recognise the drive as HDD and assign it an arbitry number based on its postion with refeerence to any other peripherals.

If it does have an eSATA port, you will require one on the back of your computer. Basically, its just a port that has a connector which runs to a pci-bracket and has a connector there... essentially an extension lead to the back of your computer to allow SATA devices to be plugged into it. This isnt so much a plug and play system.

It will most likely be USB 2.0 which means youll be running quite a high bandwith and recieve reasonable transfer speeds anyway.

aZk.

[woteva]

With a SATA HDD, there is NO master/slave etc.
The jumper pins are used for compatability / limiting speed etc.
More details can be found at the manufacturers website
Western Digital Hard Drives
Seagate Technology

[Ra1d]

the ONLY advantage? lol... what more do you want other than good transfer speeds?

i was just trying to make clear the simple difference between the two methods of connection, so wagon wheel could decide for himself which connection would be best for him. rattling off all the technical jargon doesnt answer the question any better than my response

[vlv8vic]

i was just trying to make clear the simple difference between the two methods of connection, so wagon wheel could decide for himself which connection would be best for him. rattling off all the technical jargon doesnt answer the question any better than my response

Good point, the technical rubbish isn't always the answer someone wants. They also don't need to be belittled by comments like "that's worrying."

Remember it's a car forum, not a place we should expect everyone to be a computer geek. Simple question asked, why not a simple, non-smart-arsed answer?!

I've got one - i have a really old PC in the shed. was win95 or something and pretty crap. Power supply blew up and it was never worth (or easy for that matter) to get a replacement. Is there anyway i can get the stuff off the hard drive? Can i put it in this computer (xp) and make it work?

[Tom_1569]

I've got one - i have a really old PC in the shed. was win95 or something and pretty crap. Power supply blew up and it was never worth (or easy for that matter) to get a replacement. Is there anyway i can get the stuff off the hard drive? Can i put it in this computer (xp) and make it work?

Depending on your new computer, yes you can run it as a secondary hard drive. But your new computer must have IDE, and some brand name computers wont let you attach another hard drive with out pain stakenly removing their security crap. I wont get to technical caus i may upset someone, but yes it can be done, and quite easy.
Another way of doing is buy a IDE/SATA to USB adapter, these are great for getting stuff off old hard drives aswell as virus removal, cost about 50 bux, but not worth it if its for a once off, i use mine atleast once a week.

[azkwazere]

i was just trying to make clear the simple difference between the two methods of connection, so wagon wheel could decide for himself which connection would be best for him. rattling off all the technical jargon doesnt answer the question any better than my response

Good point, the technical rubbish isn't always the answer someone wants. They also don't need to be belittled by comments like "that's worrying."

Remember it's a car forum, not a place we should expect everyone to be a computer geek. Simple question asked, why not a simple, non-smart-arsed answer?!

I've got one - i have a really old PC in the shed. was win95 or something and pretty crap. Power supply blew up and it was never worth (or easy for that matter) to get a replacement. Is there anyway i can get the stuff off the hard drive? Can i put it in this computer (xp) and make it work?

ok, lets play READ THE WHOLE ANSWER game!!!!

i managed to explain everything that was needed and gice some back ground informaiton in regards to the original question. Maybe he will learn somehtign useful from it.

Simple quesiton asked? Yes, Simple answer Given? Yeah! No offence but what i wrote isnt that complex and you could choose to omit some of the tech stuff if you wanted and still get your answer!

As for technical rubbish... haha, you want technical rubbish? ill sit here and type out the method for information transfer across a USB bus if you really want me too... Non of that was technical rubbish, all relevant and helped in giving background to the topic.

Has this forum regressed to: Answer = yes/no?

if it were my question, i would want answers as detailed as possible.

I wasnt trying to answer better than you... didnt relise you were competing... sorry for being helpful!

Anyway, this is off topic.

vlv8vic... use another compouter. take HDD out of win95 machine and plug it into another computer a slave drive then pull the data onto the new HDD.. Only copy personal files and not system files... ow wait thats to complex for ra1d... ummm, vlv8vic- yes you can do it, computer, another, copy.

aZk.

[Ra1d]

Only copy personal files and not system files... ow wait thats to complex for ra1d... ummm, vlv8vic- yes you can do it, computer, another, copy.

aZk.

im not interested in continuing some silly tit for tat crap

get as technical as you want, its obvious you have a fair knowledge in the field, but dont expect me not to retort if you attempt to belittle my post.

[Wagon_Wheel]

Whoa what the hell happened here.
Jeesuz some of you get arky, no need to say that im worrying and what not.

Its an external HDD CASE, and a normal SATA HDD and it has pins on the back of it to set it , so i just asked the question as i wasnt 100% sure as i havnt used SATA before, didnt need 99% of the crap that you posted.

But thats for those who actually helped, not bitched.

[Ra1d]

so have you had it working without any pin setting?

[TWOJZ]

so have you had it working without any pin setting?

probably because there STILL isn't any jumpers to actually set anything!

[Wagon_Wheel]

Not sure, its not mine, i bought it for my dad to back his computer up cause its been playing up.
And when i got home tonight he was already in bed.
But i have a feeling his computer went bad, but will let you know what settings we used when its going

[holdensupporter2005]

On Seagate SATA Hard Disks (Don't know about other SATA brands cos I never use them). They have 3 jumper pin configuration for basically changing the data transfer speed.

Most of the time these don't have to be touched and can be left as factory set. The only time you may need to change this is if you are installing the drive onto an older motherboard.

Western Digital - http://www.wdc.com/en/library/eide/2579-001037.pdf
Seagate - Seagate Technology - How To Install and Troubleshoot Serial ATA (SATA) Hard Drives

[TWOJZ]

On Seagate SATA Hard Disks (Don't know about other SATA brands cos I never use them). They have 3 jumper pin configuration for basically changing the data transfer speed.

Most of the time these don't have to be touched and can be left as factory set. The only time you may need to change this is if you are installing the drive onto an older motherboard.

Western Digital - http://www.wdc.com/en/library/eide/2579-001037.pdf
Seagate - Seagate Technology - How To Install and Troubleshoot Serial ATA (SATA) Hard Drives

yeah, we already had that reply haha

[hakhawk]

yeah, we already had that reply haha

and you still obviously didnt read either of them, or you wouldnt have typed

probably because there STILL isn't any jumpers to actually set anything!

since they both have jumpers on the back, seagate has one for 1.5gb or 3gb speed setting, western digital has spread spectrum clocking, spinup command control and 150mb speed limiting.

[stocky]

Good point, the technical rubbish isn't always the answer someone wants.

i liked azk's reply. it wasnt too technical and gave some good background information as to how it all works. could help people buying them in the future. youre a teacher. whats the harm in learning something while getting an answer?

[AttaBoy]

i liked azk's reply. it wasnt too technical and gave some good background information as to how it all works. could help people buying them in the future. youre a teacher. whats the harm in learning something while getting an answer?

I agree, why is some people here just have **** poor attitude?

[Reaper]

I got a WD external sata drive and it just plugged into my USB port. It has 30 or so years of bathurst on it

Reaper

[ProphetVX]

probably because there STILL isn't any jumpers to actually set anything!

That's funny because I'm looking at an SATA hdd right infront of me that has jumpers for Master, Slave, and Cable Select.

To the original poster, put the jumper as master, it shouldn't matter, but master will give you the maximum transfer speeds if it decides to limit anything.

[hakhawk]

That's funny because I'm looking at an SATA hdd right infront of me that has jumpers for Master, Slave, and Cable Select.

To the original poster, put the jumper as master, it shouldn't matter, but master will give you the maximum transfer speeds if it decides to limit anything.

got a model and brand on this drive? im curious, as noted above, sata uses one device per channel, so the master/slave stuff is obsolete and not needed on the drive. i wanna see what company forgot to take it off.

[Wagon_Wheel]

The one i have is a SAMSUNG, and its got the pins to select master and slave and all that