dual master hard drives? can this be done?

I installed another harddrive a little while back, and noticed that the cpu is making some funny noises. It happens when it uses the old drive that has been now designated as the slave drive by the jumpers. I remember in a forum that they mentioned that you can have 2 master drives? is this accurate? if so will this cause any conflicts? i noticed these noises started after i changed the old drive over to slave and feel that this may fix the issue. it could be just a bad though. any input would be appreciated.

>is this accurate?
No, there can't be two master devices or two slave devices on the same controller cable. Perhaps they meant a master device on each IDE channel?

Echo Robc. There is no way to have 2 masters on the same channel, however I'm not sure what you would call them in a RAID configuration. If one of your drives is making noises (although you clearly said that "the cpu is making funny noises"), then you probably have a bad drive. Does it drop out on you intermittantly? Can you still access your data?

yes, at least i think that is the case.
when i was running windows after the change over to being a slave drive, data access was intermitent. now that i have changed over to linux, i have lost access to two user directories, but i'm not sure if that is from the drive or a faulty install of slackware. it could just be a newbie mistake i've made using the root prevlage. I can confirm that it makes sounds like hitches and barings inside the drive. it also makes beeps during certain up times. i'm lost on what it is, but like you said it is possibly fried. thank god drives are getting cheaper.

That definately sounds like a faulty drive. I had a drive start to go on me like that. Sometimes it worked fine, other times I couldn't get to it or part of it would crap out (like a whole partition). I sent the drive back and they sent me a new one (it was under warranty).

i checked my jumper connections and noticed i had one designated as a single drive set up and another as a master drive. once i fixed the jumpers the sounds disappeared. at least for now.