3 HHDs, 1 IDE cable?

[jester2000]

I have 2 hard drives in my computer, a 30 gb, and a 200 gb. I have an extra drive bay in there too. There's an 80 gb hhd that I took out of a different computer and I'd love to put the 80 gig in that extra bay. But having 2 dvd drives and 2 hdds the IDE cable are all used up.

Are there cables that have more than 2 connections on them? Is it possible to have more than 2 internal drives using some other method?

By the way, I have a 160 gb firewire external drive that is also on this computer. I realize that I could buy an enclosure for the 80 gb and use it as an external drive.

I'd appreciate any advice on this!

Thanks,

Jess

 

[micker377]

Just put in a PCI IDE card. Gives you two more IDE ports, for four more IDE drives.

 

[jlshelton]

Standard IDE (ATA) allows only two devices controlled by the motherboard, per port. One is the Master, the other the Slave. Only one can communicate at one time. Sharing an IDE port between two devices can result in performance problems, such as when one device takes a while to do something, the other one waits.

With the typical motherboard having two IDE connectors, the most you can connect is 4 total drives.

PCI-bus based IDE cards are very cheap, and typically available with 2 IDE ports (like Micker says). Best to spread your disk drives around, one per port, to minimize delays.

The new Serial ATA (SATA) allows only one device per port now, but in the future will allow multiple devices.

 

[cdogg]

such as when one device takes a while to do something, the other one waits

That's not entirely correct. Both devices are taking turns back and forth sequentially in a matter of milliseconds. Each command/request sent over the IDE controller is extremely fast and always takes the same amount of time.

It is true that both devices trying to operate at the same time can cause slowdowns. But the point is that they are working on their task at the same time, taking turns using the IDE controller much like a token ring network works.

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884

 

[DragonQ0105]

The new Serial ATA (SATA) allows only one device per port now, but in the future will allow multiple devices"

True, but since the connectors are smaller, most motherboards have either 4 or 8 Ports anyway, allowing for 4/8 Drives, so if you're a standard user, 4 will do fine, but if you're someone who needs RAID or just has lots of drives, 8 will work for you.