What are these letters in Boot drive list?

[AlanRR]

When viewing boot drive list most detail are obvious - connection, manufacturer and size etc - except for these mystery 2 alpha digits.

I am trying to match drives I know exist in my pc against what the boot mechanism knows them as and these two letters all seem to be unique yet I cannot match them back to any data I can see in W7.

Thoughts?

 

[rvcjew]

That is just how your bios designates what drive will boot first it will not show in windows. Windows uses its own management scheme to number drives. Those can be reordered on that list as it shows what boots first in your pc. Per your manual for that board if you want to know how the disks are plugged in then it's on the main page as shown.

 

[AlanRR]

After more research I am getting the impression these are more historic in that pre SATA ie PATA had the concept of Master/Slave Primary/Secondary and 3rd/4th whatever that is - so the letter combination above mean in order 3rd Master, Primary Master, Primary Slave, Secondary Slave, 4th Master. I recall in PATA days you had links to set on the drive to set the drive as Master/Slave Primary/Secondary and probably 3rd/4th.

I further assume that in these SATA days where there is only one physical drive per cable - there is now no longer any need to differentiate.

If anybody knows different then I'm interested - otherwise I'll sleep well with the above explanation.

 

[rvcjew]

After more research I am getting the impression these are more historic in that pre SATA ie PATA had the concept of Master/Slave Primary/Secondary and 3rd/4th whatever that is - so the letter combination above mean in order 3rd Master, Primary Master, Primary Slave, Secondary Slave, 4th Master. I recall in PATA days you had links to set on the drive to set the drive as Master/Slave Primary/Secondary and probably 3rd/4th.

I further assume that in these SATA days where there is only one physical drive per cable - there is now no longer any need to differentiate.

If anybody knows different then I'm interested - otherwise I'll sleep well with the above explanation.

Yes that is correct and that scheme is so the bios knows what to boot from first it keeps your drives in a table of the order you set like that. It boots the same as old they just have their own channel for communication.