clearing basic hardware concepts

[vickey_20]

Hello there
I am new to linux and haven't done my harware course properly and m facing little problem with the terminology used in the 'fdisk' and some other bunch of command where is o/p hda and sda and other stuff.
After some googling i understood the basic meaning of
hda- primary master
hdb- primary slave
hdc- secondary master
hdd- secondary slave

but I couldn't understand how exactly does changing the pin settting effects the type of maste and slave. Please put some light on this or provide me some good web site link where i can brush up my concepts. Thnx in advance

[i92guboj]

Hello there
I am new to linux and haven't done my harware course properly and m facing little problem with the terminology used in the 'fdisk' and some other bunch of command where is o/p hda and sda and other stuff.
After some googling i understood the basic meaning of
hda- primary master
hdb- primary slave
hdc- secondary master
hdd- secondary slave

This is true for IDE drives, but not for SATA and other kind of drives. And only if you use the old IDE drivers. The new PATA ones will name the IDE drives just like the SATA ones: sda, sdb, sdc...

but I couldn't understand how exactly does changing the pin settting effects the type of maste and slave. Please put some light on this or provide me some good web site link where i can brush up my concepts. Thnx in advance

For IDE drives, the master/slave status is decided based on a selector that is often in the back of the drive, between the plugs for the power and data cables

[bigtomrodney]

For IDE drives, the master/slave status is decided based on a selector that is often in the back of the drive, between the plugs for the power and data cables

If you're not familiar with these concepts, they can be an absolute nightmare. Pins set for Master, but ribbon position is slave often means that you don't see the drive! The best way to do it if you are using IDE is to set everything to Cable Select (CS) and then put your Master at the end of the ribbon with the Slave at the midpoint. Also, as i92guboj said you're more likely to see IDE drives listed as sda, sdb, sdc etc. now as the drivers were merged.

[vickey_20]

guys can you suggest me some good site or resource from where i can clear my basic hardware doubts.

[i92guboj]

It really depends on what do you mean.

I don't know of any centra database where to check for supported devices. There are some sites devoted to hardware support under linux, like the sane project, the alsa project or linuxprinting.org

We could only answer to concrete questions, but "basic hardware doubts" is too wide.

[Rubberman]

guys can you suggest me some good site or resource from where i can clear my basic hardware doubts.

If Windows can see/use the drives, Linux can also. Don't worry about it too much. Usually the hard drives are on the primary controller, and your CD/DVD drives are on the secondary controller. That said, it's a lot more simple with the new sata drives and controllers as they have no master/slave differentiation.