how to find primary sources

Primary

Updated: 06/30/2020 by Computer Hope

In general, primary refers to something ordered first in a sequence, or something of first-order importance. With computer hard drives, a primary drive is the first drive on a computer with more than one drive. For example, in Windows, the primary drive is the C: drive. If you had another hard drive in Windows, it would likely be the D: drive.

Primary drive
Primary jumper setting
Primary partition
Other examples of primary with computers

Primary drive

A hard drive may also be a Pri master, which indicates the hard drive is the primary drive on the primary data channel of its connection to the motherboard.

Primary jumper setting

A primary jumper setting is found on a hard drive or CD drive, and adjusted using jumpers, as shown below. The primary setting allows for two devices to be attached to a single IDE/ATAPI connection.

Jumpers on back of IDE hard disk drive

Note

With early hard drives, this setting was referred to as a "master" setting. However, because "master" is offensive in this context, it's better to refer to this drive as "primary" or "device0."

Primary partition

The primary drive may also have a primary partition, which is the first partition containing a single file system (but is not necessarily ordered first on the drive). A hard drive can contain up to four primary partitions, only one of which can be "active" (bootable). By contrast, an extended partition can contain multiple logical partitions, each with a different filesystem. A hard drive can contain only one extended partition.

Other examples of primary with computers

Primary cache
Primary channel
Primary Domain Controller
Primary drive
Primary key
Primary monitor
Primary partition
Primary storage device

Hard drive terms, Secondary