Step 3: Set drive jumpers

Resetting a drive's jumper is a simple matter of removing a plastic tab and sliding it onto a different set of posts.

Before you set your new drive's master/slave jumper, check the setting on the drive that's already in your system to see whether it's set to "cable select" (CSEL or CS). With cable select, the ATA ribbon-cable connector determines whether the drive operates as master or slave. This makes it possible to install and rearrange drives without having to change master/slave settings, but there's a catch: You have to set the jumper on both drives on the channel to CSEL for cable select to work, and the ribbon cable must support CSEL. You may need to check your PC's documentation to determine if its cables support cable select.

The other, more reliable, alternative is to set one drive's jumper to master and the other's to slave. You'll have to remove the existing drive to check, and possibly change, its jumper setting, but the master/slave arrangement is a foolproof approach. The drive in our Dell system was set to cable select, while our iBuyPower system used master/slave settings. In both cases, we set the jumpers to master/slave.