ide cables?

[custard]

right i run 2 hard drives on the PC but want to add at least another 1. dont want to pay for another larger hard drive as i have 2 200gigers just now.want to have another one added for storage plus the option to add another one for experimenting with Os's etc

now am i being dumb as i cant seem to find an IDE cable with connections for 3 or 4 hard drives.or am i missing some connector for joining 2 cables?

probably an easy quextion for someone

 

[The Negotiator]

You can't daisy chain 3 can you? Maximum of 2, master and slave. Maybe I have misread but it sounds like you want to do this.

Have you not got a second IDE input?

 

[steve1219]

Each IDE cable usually allows for connecting 2 drives (master and slave) so you only need one more cable.

 

[carlos1981]

IDE cables have only 2 channells. Master and Slave.

Obviously you cant have 2 masters on the same channel.

Negotiator, he wil have the second IDE, but if he runs 2 optical drives (CD/DVD-ROM/RW), he will use both channels.
If he only has one optical, he can install the other HDD on the second IDE channel but it is normally not reccomended to put a HDD on the same channell as an optical drive coz it causes a slight lag in transfers.

The easiest way round the issue is to get a USB external HDD, but theses are used for external storage, and may be tricky to boot off.
Or he could get a SATA/RAID PCI Card, 3 new HDD's but that'll cost a fair amount.

HTH.

Carl.

 

[chaos]

AFAIK you can only have 2 IDE drives per IDE slot, as Paul said - Primary & Secondary. Most motherboards have 2 IDE slots, but your CD/DVD drive etc uses IDE slots as well, so I think in theory you can have 4 HDDs (but then the only optical drive you could have is a floppy).

I think in reality you have to go for a motherboard that supports SATA and get a SATA and not an IDE HDD.

 

[custard]

yup i run 2 dvd drives as well

oh well looks like i need to get even bigger hard drives.till then i'll need to get burning some stuff onto dvd's to free some space.
might buy a cheap HD encosure and do and external one though for backing up as well.

thanks for the help guys

 

[steve1219]

Buy yourself a PCI IDE extention card quite cheap and does the job.

Steve

 

[thefishdude]

check ya mother board. if its newish you may have more than 2 ide conenctors my board about 18 montsh old and its got 4 ide conectors on it

 

[Luciel]

simple, there are ide cable splitters from 5 quid from mapplins, does the job.

 

[Bunny]

simple, there are ide cable splitters from 5 quid from mapplins, does the job.

care to explain how that works? part number?

 

[Alex]

Not sure that can be done... how does the processor address a 3rd hdd on a 2 channel system... you could always try a USB Mass Storage device, e.g. usb hdd or high capacity flash media.

 

[Liam]

What exactly fills these 2x200GB drives Custard? :chin:

Liam

 

[custard]

hmmm well lots of freeware and legal back up stuff

 

[Luciel]

i dont know exactly how it works, i just know they exist as a friend uses one he got from mapplings, if u think about it, its no different than a standard id cable with 2 outputs, no?

 

[Hellcat]

no it isn't. An IDE cable has only 2 connectors as IDE has a maximum of 2 channels. Maybe your friend had a 1 connector IDE cable and has added the 2nd channel.

I just checked the Maplin website and couldn't find anything like an IDE splitter.

 

[Trancendental]

If you have SCSI or can buy an SCSI card you can add like 30 H-Disk Drives BUT then you will need SCSI drives not IDE drives.

SCSI's back in the day used to be a lot faster (RPMs) and also a lot more expensive, I aint checked in a while so you might want to.

www.scan.co.uk

 

[Luciel]

gah, well sorry then :/ was just following information on from a mate