Install a 3rd Hard Drive?

[tekie404]

I already have 2 HDD's on my comuter set as master/slave. I dont have an open IDE slot. But i do have an available PCI slot, and i was thinking about gettin a PCI IDE controller card, which allows me to add 4 additional HDDs. What do you think? I dont know which one to get, they have a few at compusa.

Would it show up on my computer as another drive, in addition to my others? I would have to set the jumpers to slave or to master? It should work tho. Do any of you have 3 HDD's? Whats ur setup and what do you reccomend?

Thanks.

 

[Nitestick]

i say get an SATA controller rather than an IDE controller. i have 3 hdd's at present and 2 dvd drives. dvd drives are master and slave on my secondary IDE. as my primary master i have an 80gb. on my SATA i have a 36gb raptor and a 250gb caviar

 

[tekie404]

Well the new HDD i have is ATA, will it work with SATA? If it does ill go for the SATA. Whats the difference? Faster speeds and such?
So you have the 36gb and the 250gb HDD on the PCI ATA controller?

 

[Nitestick]

oh, you didn't mention you already had the drive. you could get an SATA adapter but i suppose now you are probably better off sticking with IDE. SATA is faster (mostly theoretically faster at the moment) and has a simpler cabling system. the drives are identical other than a different power connector and data cable connector

edit: no my raptor and the 250gb are on a SATA controller on my motherboard. sorry i know that doesn't help your scenario much but it could be set up similarly with an SATA controller card

 

[tekie404]

alrite, thanks man. It should be pretty easy. Get a PCI IDE contoller card, stick it into the pci, connect the HDD, and voila, i have three HDD's.

 

[Amd2800]

i had 5 HDDS in my pc ..2 IDE 3Sata

 

[Static_11]

how many gigs do you have total amd?

I have a 80 gig master, 160 gig slave that newegg screwed up on because they were only supposed to give me a 120 , and if i get a pci controller i can get my 3rd 20 gig hooked up. Since i just recently got a dvd burner im going to buy a 300 gig hdd soley to store dvd's on

 

[tekie404]

i got the pci ide controller and i have now 400 total GB's on my budget dell 2400...pretty decent considering i got it with 40gb's 3 years ago.

 

[reggie_da_man]

Wow that's a lot of room, what are you doing on a budget system like that?

 

[JohnnyX]

If you have USB 2.0 you can use that to, And you can still mount the drive in your PC case if you want