More than 4 IDE devices? How?

[Nighthawk69]

Hey all-

I currently have 2 HD's, a Zip Drive and a CD-ROM drive. I want to add a DVD-ROM drive in the future and possibly a CD-RW, although I have no more connectors on my IDE cables from my motherboard. My question is, how do I connect more than 4 IDE devices, such as the DVD or burner?

Any suggestions appreciated!

Thanks,

 

[dcdomain]

Perhaps one of those ATA100 PCI cards could help? You know the one that everyone is getting for free after rebate by buying a Maxtor drive too? I'm not sure if that works in tandem with the IDE controllers on your mobo, or if it disables them, but no reason to really disable them right?

 

[Sunny129]

I have a mobo that officially supports ATA100, so i'm assuming that i dont need one of those ATA100 cards. but lets say i'm also already using 4 IDE devices. does this mean that the only way to get more than 4 IDE connections is to get a PCI IDE controller card?

 

[Pederv]

If you only have 2 IDE connectors on your motherboard, the your choices are an above board controller or SCSI.

 

[JustStarting]

get a kt7- 8 ide devices

 

[BearX00]

you can only handle 2 devices per IDE header, so you either need a new motherboard that supports more than 2 headers, like the Abit KT7 raid or you should get an addon card that has an IDE controller on it. that will give you the ability to add 4 more devices.

 

[BearX00]

--oops double post --

 

[Nighthawk69]

I've got an MSI K7T Pro... can someone point me to a good IDE controller card?

 

[jsbush]

Here

 

[Sunny129]

a few questions...

1) jsbush, will the card you suggested in the link work well on a CUSL2 also?

2) since my primary and secondary IDE controllers already exist on my mobo, would adding an IDE controller card to my system cause conflict with my current IDE controllers, or would the controllers on the card be detected in the device manager as the third and fourth IDE controllers?

 

[jsbush]

Sunny129 yes the card will work in the CUSL2 and the card will add another 4 ide devices for a total of 8. I sujest you get the Ultra 100.

 

[Sunny129]

by the way, all my questions are theoretical...i am currently only using 3 IDE devices, but i hope to have another HDD and maybe a CD burner in the future, which would put my up to 5 IDE devices. as you probably already know, the CUSL2 supports ATA100. the only thing stopping me from exploiting that feature is my HDD. i dont think it supports ATA100. someday i will get a newer HDD w/ ata100 support. in the mean time, i have a CD-ROM and a zip drive, and i dont know if either if them have ata100 capabilities. right now, if i could have any one IDE device using ata100, it would be my HDD, so i may have to go get a new one soon.

 

[Nighthawk69]

jsbush:

Can the ATA100 card also run ATA66/33 HDs, CD-RWs, DVD-ROMs, etc?

Thanks,

 

[jsbush]

Nighthawk69: Yes it can.

 

[Pederv]

You might want to check the specs on the card and make sure it will support non-harddrive ATA devices (cd's, cdrw's, zips, etc.), some above board controllers suggest not connecting those devices. Even if an above board controller (or built in secondary controller) supports ATA100 it should also support ATA33 and ATA66. The above board contoller will more than likely show up in your device manager as a SCSI device controller and most of the time will not cause any conflicts.

 

[jugornot]

I have one of the hipoint mb's. Well actually 2, and they are great for allowing more drives. On the primary master I have my cdrom - slave dvd drive. On the secondary master TDK 12x10x32 cdrw and zip drive. On the highpoint 370 I have two maxtor hd's as masters and I still have two devices I can add if I want to go to raid 0+1. All have dma enabled and run great. Before I got the burnproof cdrw my phillips 8x4x32 ran just fine also.

 

[Nighthawk69]

Thanks very much for the info! I'm looking into DVD drives - suggestions?

Thanks,

 

[tjll11a]

Any suggestions on where to buy fasttrack 100

Question i have a EPOX 8kta2 duron 800
which supports ata-100 on the mb if i add this card i would be able to have 8 drives. and this card would be detected as a scsi device?

Anyone tried useing this addin card with a scsi card? I have a 640mb optical drive I use sometimes. Just wondering if not it can always go in my other computer.
Thanks for all your help

 

[tjll11a]

Axiontech has it for 97.95 is that a good price

 

[jsbush]

People sell them here in the sale/trade form for like $50.

 

[tjll11a]

woops sorry for all these replys
I found it at buy.com retail box 85.95.
Add alittle for shipping and 30 off coupon

 

[mazdarx7]

Although I haven't tried it out, the Promise ATA66 can be flashed and have the latest updated drivers to support ATA100. I went to their website and looked at bios/driver updates for both ATA66 and 100. The links take you to the ATA66's driver/bios update pages, regardless of whether you seek either of the ATA66's or 100's drivers, where the ATA100 support is indicated. I am under the impression that since both use the 80 pin cable, the ATA66 was designed with a bios that is either identical or large enough to handle the ATA100's bios and, well, the drivers are a windows issue. After flashing with the latest bios and drivers, Windows detects the ATA66 as a Promise ATA100 SCSI. It would be very interesting to compare both cards side by side, part for part.

 

[shawnmos]

How much would the ultra100 board cost?