installing more then 2 hard drives

[SLeblanc]

Hi,
I currently have two hard drives in my computer. One is a 40Gig with windows XP installed on it and the second HD is a 120Gig HD which is for storage. I'll soon be running out of space so I trying to find out what I need to do to install a third hard drive. I'm thinking of getting WD's 250Gig hard drive which as a ATA100 adaptor card with it. I chose WD because the other two are by WD too but if you know of a better 250Gig HD please let me know. Oh yeah, I have a Athlon XP 2100+ that a friend gave me but its not compatible with the motherboard that I have so I'll have to get a new motherboard too. So if whatever I have to do can be done by getting a certain option on a motherboard please let me know .

Thanks a lot

 

[cdogg]

The add-in PCI controller card is what you need. The ones that normally come bundled with a large hard drive are just single channel controllers, meaning one additional IDE channel.

For around $35-40, you can buy a decent Promise or HighPoint dual-channel IDE controller card which will give you 2 additional IDE channels. That way, you can have all three hard drives on their own IDE channel.

I'm not sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if some motherboards come equipped with this option integrated on the motherboard. I know some have RAID controllers, but I'm not sure about additional IDE channels.


~cdogg
[tab]"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources"
[tab][tab]- A. Einstein

 

[Snickle]

A viable option for storage would be to get an External USB 2.0 drive, up to 480Mbps transfer speed. Could use it on other computers.

 

[cdogg]

The only real downsides to USB 2.0 hard drives is speed and cost. Although the interface allows for up to 480Mbps, that's only equal to 60MB/s which isn't even as fast as ATA/66. Most drives are hardly average more than 40MB/s transfer rates, but the extra overhead that ATA/100 proves useful. In all, I would say that USB 2.0 drives can be 10-20% slower than a high-end 7200RPM IDE drive with 8MB cache.

Also, don't expect to find USB 2.0 drives that cheap, especially if you're looking for a lot of storage. Berton's right though, it is another option. Hey, at least they're portable!


~cdogg
[tab]"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources"
[tab][tab]- A. Einstein

 

[multarnc]

You can get a Maxtor 250GB USB2.0/Firewire harddrive for only about $30 more than the internal IDE one here,

http://www.mwave.com/mwave/ProdHDUS...s-USB/Firewire</b>&back=ProdHDUSB-MAXTOR.hmx?

at MWAVE.com
Just something to consider.