please sir, can i have some more? (drives)

[dani82]

currently i have a 120gb HD, a 8x dvd-rom, a 12x cd-burner, and a 4x dvd-burner; and i would like to add extra HD or two, but how would i be able to do this (if possible), without getting rid of any of the cd-rom (each one has an unique purpose)

[b00zed]

Assuming that your motherboard has no built in RAID controller (otherwise I'm sure you wouldn't be asking this question,) the only way I'm aware of to do this would involve getting a PCI IDE controller card.

[Solo]

Or you could get a SATA controller card or SATA RAID controller card and build a nice SATA RAID setup.

[mudda_t]

This might be too simple but......maybe an external hdd.:D

[dani82]

i can't believe i'd never thought of that; but no, it's more expensives, and i already kick my game controller enough

[mudda_t]

Adding an external hdd isn't really that expensive. For example you can get this kit (http://www.coolerexpress.com/by3exen.html) and save yourself a lot of money doing it yourself.
.
A buddy of mine has used it in 4 setups and swares by it.

[joshyg2]

if you really want space:

* get a motherboard with a IDE RAID controller or card
* Buy 4 x 250 gb Western Digital 7200 rpm 8 mm cache drives
* Buy a case that will store and cool, your 4 drives
* Buy a 550w Power Supply to power your drives

4 x 250 gb = 1000 gb

plus you could have another few hard drives on your other normal IDEs if you want.

i am really annoyed though, that they havn't realeased 300 gb or 400+ gb yet, come-on we live in 21st Century.

I NEED SPACE! RIPPING! DOWNLOADS!

[ukb007]

500 GB HDs are there (Hitachi, I think.) All modern motherboards have enough IDE connectors (three, at the least). It's also possible to connect two HDs on one connector cable (Master/Slave).

If dani82's MB has only two IDE connectors (seems possible, judging from his post) then maybe it's time to think about a motherboard shift. Since the motherboard is the single most important component of a computer, one should try to have the best if possible, in terms of features and connectivity.

Regards.

[dani82]

getting a new mobo just for more drives? i don't think so; beside i still got 20 months of warranty left; it's better to get a controller card (for me anyway)


i was going to start a new thread, but since someone already reply, here goes:


i seen thread about drive positions (primary/slave) for 4 drives, but how should i arrange 6?

3 HD:

120gb WD 7200rpm 8mb
120gb Maxtor 7200rpm 8mb
20gb Qantuam ???0rpm ?mb

3 CD-Rom:

8x dvd-rom
12x cd-r/w
4x dvd-r/w

[Angelus]

500 GB HDs are there (Hitachi, I think.)

Actually they're 400 GB ones that I think Hitachi came out with and they're extremely hard to find anywhere right now, maybe you could find a few on eBay, not sure though.

i seen thread about drive positions (primary/slave) for 4 drives, but how should i arrange 6?

You don't want to have a CD/DVD-Rom drive on the same IDE cable as your largest hard drives (because if you're copying a DVD to a hard disk on the same IDE cable, it's gonna take forever!) so I would put both 120 GB hard drives on the same IDE cable and set one to master and the other to slave. I don't think the other orders matter too much, perhaps it's best to put a drive that you use a lot with one that's not used too much. Doesn't really matter though.

[TotalChaos]

I was just curious, why you require a 550Watt PSU? I run my file server off of a 420Watt PSU. It has 6 X 120GB 8MB cache, a 40GB, a 60GB, plus CD-ROM, floppy, 1.3GHz Athlon, simple tnt2 16MB graphics. I never have problems with intermittent power and the PSU doesn't run very hot at all. The PSU is a 420W UNEEC/HPC ATX Power Supply, Dual Fan, Ball Bearing. Seems fairly generic to me... not antec or turbo cool! What do you think? Any ideas?

PS sorry for the slightly off topic post!!!!

[joshyg2]

If a 420W works good for you, great, I didn't know that setup would work.

In my case, I had a generic 400W PSU - one fan, running a AMD 2500+, 5 ball bearing fans, 3 cold cathode tubes, 5 x HDD drives, 3 CD drives, and the comp just kept turning off, and the HDD drives just kept failing.

So I bought myself a Antec TruePower 550W dual fan PSU.
After I installed it, no more problems. Everything ran fine.

My experience anyway.

[TotalChaos]

Most people told me that my older 400watt antec PSU wouldn't power more then a few HDD and Disc Drives. When I bought the 420watt PSU, I didn't plan on running very many drives. It just happend to be the right "Lego" when I started building my fileserver. Now that my drive count has increased (to 8 HHD + 1 CD) I worried that it would fail and/or become unstable. So far Everything is cool....literaly. (5 case fans and the 2 PSU fans actualy do somthing... lol) Just makes me wonder why I should buy these expensive PSU! (of which I have bought many... perhaps I'll learn one day)