Can I have more than 4 IDE devices?

[DudleyDoRite]

I have cdrw, cdrom, and 2 hard drives, can I install another HD? Servers have so many bays, and hot swappable, they must run more than 4 ide devices? I have a simple ordinary computer, and my HD"s are not big enough, but I have another 8G I'd like to add to the two I already have in there. Can I? I have a ten year old scsi HD with a scsi port, but I doubt that HD is very big. I've never been able to get at it cuz it has some novell OS on it that I cant' figger out.

 

[RandyG]

You can only install 4 IDE devices, unless you have a controller card,like the one from Promise. This will give you an additional 2 IDE ports, which can run 2 devices each, Master and Slave, just like the ports on your motherboard.

They usually cost anywhere from $25 - 45.

 

[DudleyDoRite]

Randy,

Thanks, thats the solution I was hoping to hear. I would have asked if the bios would support that had I thought of it first, which I dint, I guess maybe the bios dont matter on an add on card like this, I'm sure the manufacturers thought of that already. I'll look to buy one of them to solve this,

 

[Catmando]

In case you're wondering, the IDE controller card has it's own BIOS to handle the drives. I would recommend getting an ATA133 card so if you want to buy a newer hard drive you won't have to buy another controller card to support it.

 

[RandyG]

Good call Catmando!! The link I provided from Promise specified the Ultra133 TX2, but I didn't actually recommend it in my above post.

Thanx for jumping in!!

 

[Mahmud603]

If I may add a point or two here. The Promise ATA133 TX2 card has to be used with a 40 Pin 80 Wire Ide cable and will not run with a 40 pin 40 wires one.

Fortunately, a new cable is supplied with the card. To make the best use of the card it is a good idea to use your 2 fastest hard drives on it.

Additionally, I found that when I connected my DVD Rom and CD-RW to the second IDE channel, they ran in PIO mode instead of DMA so these two devices remain on the mother board IDE controllers.