How to determine programmatically how a DVD or HDD is connected - Master or Slave?

Question

On a desktop one can easily look at the jumpers. The same is not true for laptops and it would be useful to determine how a drive is connected if one wants to replace it.

Any ideas of how to do this, or even whether it is possible?

Intended platform is Windows (either XP or Vista).

Recent experience is with a Toshiba A50 laptop where the firmware turned out to be Toshiba specific, and a drive through standard channels (Toshiba's) was 5 times more expensive than was supportable by the value of the PC and the BIOS was unhelpful in the extreem.

It took 5 attempts and a very helpful supplier to crack that one and I wondered about avoiding this issue, should it arise, in future! :)

Answer 1

If you're using a Windows platform, WMI may be able to tell you...

Answer 2

Most older BIOSes (and I say older, since you are talking about PATA) provide a summary table for detected hard-drives - where you can usually override some parameters. Try entering BIOS setup (F2, Delete) during boot sequence and look in either Basic Setup/IDE HDD configuration or something along those lines.