Is it possible to have two primary EIDE or IDE drives?

Two or more primary hard drives, CD-ROM (compact disc read-only memory) drives, or different EIDE (enhanced integrated drive electronics) / IDE (integrated drive electronics) disk drives can be in one computer. However, you can only have one primary drive per channel or per cable. All other drives on the same cable must have their jumpers set to secondary or cable select.

Computers with an EIDE/IDE controller have two connection points (channels), allowing for two primary and two secondary for a total of four different drives. In the picture below, the primary IDE channel could have one primary drive and the secondary IDE channel could have one primary drive.