by C. L. Easey

Created on: June 03, 2009

A hard drive can be set to be used as a Master or a Slave. A slave hard drive can be set to use as a backup as well as a spare drive and for recovery purposes. Slaving a hard drive is done by changing a pin setting on the drive.

A hard drive that has be set to a slave can be used as a backup drive. A backup drive can be used to store system files and programs that have been installed on the system. A spare drive can be used to retrieve data in the event the main hard drive on the system fails. Having a backup location for files is always a good idea in case a program or file needs to be replaced on the system. A slave drive that is used as a backup can also be used to store a backup copy of the operating system. A backup of the operating system can be restored in the event a system file becomes corrupt.

A hard drive can be set as a slave to use for extra storage on a computer system. When a new computer is purchased a hard drive from an old computer can be installed in the new machine to use as spare drive. This is a good way to retain data as well as having a separate area to specific types of files such as pictures and movies. A spare drive that has been set to a slave drive can also be used for some system files that are used by Windows. This can have the effect of increasing the performance of the system because there will be less reading and writing to the main drive.

A hard drive that has been set to slave can be used to recover data from a hard drive crash or an inoperable operating system. The main hard drive can be taken out of an existing system, set to act as a slave drive and then installed in another computer. Once installed in another computer various software diagnostics can be run to scan and detect if any problems exist on the drive. Another benefit of setting drive as a slave is that it can be accessed by another machine if it is unable to boot on its own. There can be many problems that can occur to a hard drive and being able to set it as a slave provides an opportunity to retrieve data.

A hard drive can be set to a slave setting by changing the pin setting on the drive. Locate where the pin location is on the drive and use a pair of needle nose pliers to remove the pin cover. Reinsert the pin cover where the slave setting is located. Once the pine cover has been replaced the hard drive is all set to be used as a slave.

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