Two or more primary hard drives, CD-ROM drives, or different EIDE/IDE disk drives can be in one computer. However, you can only have one primary drive per channel or per cable. All other drives on the same cable must have their jumpers set to secondary or cable select.

Computers with an EIDE/IDE controller have two connection points (channels), which means two different primary and two secondary for a total of four different drives. In the picture below, the primary IDE channel could have one primary drive and the secondary IDE channel could have one primary drive.

  • See the primary and secondary definitions for further information and related links.
  • Computer disk drive interface help and support.