Adding third Hard Drive

cleanbluesky · Post by **cleanbluesky** » Sun Oct 31, 2004 6:10 am

Is it posible to add a third hard-drive to a computer? I understand that f/wire drives are supposed to be good, is that the only way (other than PCI controller) that I could achieve this?

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Sun Oct 31, 2004 7:27 am

on a regular ide controller you can have 4 devices - 3 HD and 1 CD/DVD for example (which you probably know).
I never examined it, but modern CD roms slaved to the 2nd channel aren't supposed to drag performance of the disk down - opposed to vintage CDs, imho.
Other than that all modern boards have SATA channels for main or additional drives.

cheers, Tom

firubbi · Post by **firubbi** » Sun Oct 31, 2004 10:31 am

Yes I’d done that(thanks to Garyb for that)
Primary master-40GB
Primary slave-80GB
Secondary master –CDRW
Secondary slave-120GB

All HD are 7200 rpm(segate) and works fine.
Thanks

cleanbluesky · Post by **cleanbluesky** » Sun Oct 31, 2004 12:14 pm

I have one CD-ROM that I use, the other can be removed. Isn't the CD drive SCSI? What cable does it use? To have cd drive as master would it have to be at the end of the cable or in the middle?

Rob van Berkel · Post by **Rob van Berkel** » Tue Nov 02, 2004 2:55 am

You can easily tell if your Cd is SCSI by looking in the device manager in your windows. Choose 'view devices by connection' and you'll see where it's connected to.
Or just open up your PC. If the cable fits the 3rd hard disc, it's ATA and not SCSI.
As for master/slave: the master should be on the end of the chain.
Cheers,
Rob

blazesboylan · Post by **blazesboylan** » Tue Nov 02, 2004 3:08 am

It might be worth spending a few extra bucks for a removable drive too. (A bay and a tray together cost about $70 Canadian IIRC, $20 for just a removable tray.) If you're working on stuff that you want to shelve for a while and go back to, it's very handy.

Counterparts · Post by **Counterparts** » Tue Nov 02, 2004 4:03 am

cleanbluesky wrote:

Is it posible to add a third hard-drive to a computer? I understand that f/wire drives are supposed to be good, is that the only way (other than PCI controller) that I could achieve this?

We use firewire connceted drives (with exchangable caddies) to perform the company's data backups each day at work very fast & quite reliable. We had lots of troubles trying USB2 versions.

Alternatively, you could get an PCI SCSI card, but then you're using up PCI bandwidth when you use the drive (which you probably don't want to do!) SCSI drives are quite pricey too.

If you've only got 1x CD ROM drive, then as already pointed out, you can connect three IDE drives. An alternative to this would be to use e.g. external USB/Firewire CD ROM drive(s) and have up to four internal IDE HDDs.

Royston