Adding more than 4 IDE devices to a PC

Discussion in 'All other topics' started by symon, Dec 13, 2003.

  1. symon

    symon Member

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    I have 3 CD/DVD drives and a harddrive in my PC which is connected via 2 IDE cables as the slave & master.
    But....

    What do I do if I want to add an aditional internal IDE harddrive to my PC!

    Is there anyway I can add any more!!!

    The PC case has 4x cd/dvd drive slots and 6xide drive slots internal.

    So how do I connect more than the classic 4 IDE devices?
     
  2. Praetor

    Praetor Moderator Staff Member

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    An extra IDE controller, a RAID controller, etc
     
  3. magnetic

    magnetic Regular member

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    well,
    You can use an ATA controller card to add four more Hard Drives (using standard IDE cables), inexpensive card's and you can set up the PC to boot from the ATA card (with the boot hard drive attached to it)

    Just get bigger hard drive?, only problem here is will the motherboard chipset support the larger drive.
    I had to get the ATA card as my new HD (200GB) was only recognised as 139 GB, but would word fine on the ATA-133 card.

    You could try SCSI, basically loads of SCSI drives (special harddrives) on the one cable.

    Personally I'd get the ATA card, fits in a PCI slot and uses IDE cables, simple and easy to use.

     
  4. Praetor

    Praetor Moderator Staff Member

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    Doesnt work for all purposes m8 (i.e., data redundancy, file archival etc)
     
  5. symon

    symon Member

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    I'm not into data recovery, if it goes belly up then i'll start again.

    I've had a look at the I/O IDE controllers cards and one PCI will add an extra 4 devices.

    So I may get on of those and a huge drive.

    Then I can keep my old drive for storage of music & crap.

    Thank you for your help.
     
  6. Praetor

    Praetor Moderator Staff Member

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    That's what we're here for! :)
     
  7. magnetic

    magnetic Regular member

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    don'y know how to do your lovely quotes but;

    Just get bigger hard drive?= just another option if more space is needed and you don't want to bother with extra drives and PCI cards.

    If we don't prove available options, how can you make the best choice
     
  8. Praetor

    Praetor Moderator Staff Member

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    1. When you post read the instructions @ the top

    2. I wasnt necessaarily arguing with you, just fielding another perspective. :)
     
  9. SadJoker

    SadJoker Regular member

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    use an ATA card or more then one. I have 2 in my box now , just dont try connecting cd drives, cd burners, dvd to ATA cards.. they dont seem to like ATA at least not UltraATA cards, something about how the drive accesses motherboard resources?
     

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