How many IDE drives can you have?

AFK_Matrix · 13 Oct 2006 at 11:43

Hi,

Got an old Pentium 3 dual core pc sitting in a huge tower so gonna turn it into a file server. Now I havn't joined lots of HDDs together before. Here is my understanding please correct me if i am wrong.

Now I havn't taken a good look but if it has 2 IDE connectors on the board then I can attach 2 hdds to each connector right? As the IDE cables come with a master and a slave?? Can I connect more HDDs or am I limited becuase of the 2 connectors and the IDE leads?

I am also going to be putting in a PCI SATA card so I can have 2-4 SATA drives is there going to be any problems with this, ie conflicts with the IDE drives etc.

Any advice welcome.

Thx

EDIT: Forgot to mention it also has a SCSI connector and I have a 18gb 10k drive any problems with connecting that too?

squiffy · 13 Oct 2006 at 11:45

Total of 4 with standard motherboards (primary master, primary slave, secondary master and secondary slave)

But you can add PCI IDE controllers, PATA and/or SATA. As long as the BIOS allows you to choose which to boot up from you shouldn't have a problem. Used a Promise PCI U-DMA 100 so could have total of 7 hard drives plus one optical! Use primary master on the motherboard for the boot drive, seems to work better that way.

Biggest concern is case size, cooling and PSU.

wizardmaxx · 13 Oct 2006 at 11:46

Should work fine and if u need more IDE's you would just install another pci card, but and IDE one.

neo-omega · 13 Oct 2006 at 13:26

if you get a scsi card (perhaps the adaptec 39160) you can attatch upwards of 20 drives on one card, slight problem of scsi drives (new ones at least) being muchos exopensive.

lmao2k · 13 Oct 2006 at 18:04

Also remember once you run out of drive letters you'll need to mount drives within folders. This is assuming all you to is assign 1 driver per letter

malcolm · 15 Oct 2006 at 08:42

AFK_Matrix said:
Hi,
EDIT: Forgot to mention it also has a SCSI connector and I have a 18gb 10k drive any problems with connecting that too?

No problem at all, use the SCSI drive as the windows disc (it will have the fastest access times) and use the IDE drives as storage. You may need the SCSI controller drivers on a floppy to load the OS if you're using Win XP.

silversurfer · 15 Oct 2006 at 19:34

Ive used 8 IDE drives in an old s754 and it was no problem. Just had to swap the 300w psu for a 450w

FatRakoon · 16 Oct 2006 at 20:20

With all my PCs, I have gone for more HDs in order to better organise my files.

Some motherboards might have a small issue with your Board also having SCSI, as many PCI IDE cards are RAID, and RAID is treated as SCSI, so there might be some issues there. Its the same with Boards that have Raid can sometimes have issues with adding a SCSI Card.

My suggestion, would be to try to find a non-raid, and non-booting PCI Card, that will let you add the drives to it, and also let you use the Motherboards IDE and SCSI ports.

My most extreme project to date with adding as many drives as I could was with my trusty ABIT KT7A-Raid Motherboard... That board allowed me to fill up the 2 IDE Lines on the board, plus the onboard RAID, but I also added an ITE8212 ( Nice card, cheap too ) and an SIL0680 ( Sort of ok, bootable, but iffy for RAID with Linux as Linux still sees the HDs seperately so its software raid ) plus I also ran an Adaptec SCSI Card too... What was even more wild was that I had a SoundBlaster 16 that had an IDE connector on the back, that also allowed a further 2 devices... I had 14 or something drives in that PC at one time.

That said, I also have a KD7-Raid which is much more up-to-date ( Compared with the KT7 anyway ) but getting SCSI running on that was a real chore as the onboard RAID was always poking its head in - even when disabled.

So, yes, as long as the cards dont conflict, and as long as the Motherboard is happy with that particular card, you will be ok.