There is no need for a master or slave distinction with SATA drives because they each connect to the motherboard with their own SATA cable. Two IDE/PATA drives, on the other hand, could share the ...

Most current motherboards (MOBOs ... SATA hard drives can operate in a backward-compatible PATA/IDE mode, a standard AHCI mode, or vendor-specific RAID. Essentially, IDE is considered adequate ...