How Many Drives?????

[oceanview]

Question; Based on current technologies, what is the most number of IDE drives I can have per channel?

I need to add more storage for my CD/DVD burning system which currently has the following;
1 WD 120 HD; 1 Sony DRU500a; 1 Sony CDR; 1 PlexWriter 12/10/32 & 1 SCSI Pioneer 303S. I have a spare WD 120 HD that I would like to use.

Thanks....

[tuxfreak]

Re: How Many Drives?????

2 devices per channel

[Darthtanion]

Re: How Many Drives?????

But you shouldn't put any of your optical drives on the same channel you use for the hard drive(s). OPticals are slower and will slow down hard drive performance noticeably.

[Yawgm0th]

Re: How Many Drives?????

The same applies with putting hard drives of different speeds.

[Mutineer]

Re: How Many Drives?????

Does that really still happen with 80 pin cables? I know it does with 40pin IDE cables.. but I thought the idea of the 80 pin was so they worked independantly?

[oceanview]

Re: How Many Drives?????

thanks for the info everyone....but I thought that the new serial ata or 80pin ata or other emerging technologies was allowing 4 per channel.

Or is it I can use 2 per channel on 80pin ata and 2 per channel on std 40pin IDE? This configuration if permissible should give me 4 80pin ATA and 4 40pin std IDE.

Am I correct about this.

Thanks...

[Darthtanion]

Re: How Many Drives?????

Mutineer - No, the 80-pin cables do not allow your drives to run independently. They are still held to the requirements of the IDE channel.

oceanview - Sorry, but the IDE channels themselves still run on a 40-pin connector. Count them if you want, but the number of pins going to the motherboard idd not change with the changing cabling. The higher cable count was created when drive speeds went beyond the ATA66 standard. Still a 40-pin connector, but with 80 wire strands in the cable itself.

[wayout44]

Re: How Many Drives?????

The extra 40 wires are grounds which are used to keep a stronger signal at higher speeds (mainly to stop neighbouring wires' signal from causing signal interferance).

[oceanview]

Re: How Many Drives?????

Awwww Nuts....

guess I have to look as IDE/USB connect case....

thanks everyone....really appreciate the feedback...

later...

[Yawgm0th]

Re: How Many Drives?????

You could also look into an IDE controller card for a PCI slot. That would allow for more than two IDE drives, and even a RAID configuration, if you'd like. Although speed may become as much of a problem as with USB if you use a lot of other PCI devices, but I don't really know...

[wayout44]

Re: How Many Drives?????

A card like this Promise Ultra100 TX2 will give you two ATA100 channels so that you can add another 4 drives for $28us and is compatible with ATAPI devices (a lot of PCI controller cards do not work with ATAPI devices so check the specs out).

[neomyaclyk]

Re: How Many Drives?????

You could get a pci card, to expand, but it might tax out your pci bus if you have alot of reading and writing to the drives.