Adding third hard drive 4

[gfincati]

I am running Win2K and have two hard drives, a cd rom and a cd burner attached. I am running out of hard disk space and would like to add a third hard disk. The motherboard is a DFI CS65EC. Should I add a hd controller and a third hard drive or should I just replace my second hard disk with a larger disk?

 

[uttamm]

Make 3rd hard drive as slave and attached
reboot machine will detect auto.......

uttam

 

[gfincati]

Sorry, but I'm missing something here. How and where will I connect the third hard disk? There is no more space on the motherboard.

 

[Tezdread]

As far as I know it sounds like you need a RAID card, I have seen RAID PCI cards that allow you to add an extra 4 IDE devices.

 

[jaeddy]

gfincati,
Replacing the second drive with a larger one may be easier than adding a controller card, depending on your system configuration, but the new controller would likely give you more optins.

 

[butchrecon]

I agree with jaeddy. A PCI IDE raid card works great, but they are not cheap. Replace the smallest Hard drive. By default most IDE mainboaeds only allow for 4 IDE devices. 2 Per IDE channel. James Collins
Systems Support Engineer
A+, MCP

email: butchrecon@skyenet.net

Please let us (Tek-tips members) know if the solutions we provide are helpful to you. Not only do they help you but they may help others.

 

[edfair]

How about changing out the IDE hard drives to SCSI. This would give you some more flexibility. Ed Fair
efair@atlnet.com

Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply.

Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[butchrecon]

Yes it does. But if you cant afford it. Then you cant do it. James Collins
Systems Support Engineer
A+, MCP

email: butchrecon@skyenet.net

Please let us (Tek-tips members) know if the solutions we provide are helpful to you. Not only do they help you but they may help others.

 

[gfincati]

I like the idea of SCSI or RAID to expand my options, but this would probably cost considerably more than I want to spend. I think I will simply replace the second hard disk with a larger one.
Thanks

 

[tlcscousin]

A promise ata controller card should be about $35 US its only $65 CA which is a bit cheaper than a HDD.

 

[Gazbaby]

shovel204 is indeed correct. A simple ATA controller card will do.

 

[pangolin]

I use an ata ide controller, but must warn you for an annoying problem: attach a harddisk to the controller and you won't be able to use "turn of harddisk" in so many minutes in Poweroptions anymore (something one would like to use with more harddisks).
Also, anything attached to the controller won't be recognized in DOS (remember DOS? ), which I use to backup and restore.

 

[pangolin]

Why did I say that?
It should read: anything, BUT harddrives, (i.e. burners, DVD-players, etc) attached to the controller won't be recognized in DOS.