Skunkworks
1st Oct 2001, 21:19
My harddrives are starting to get full, I have two 15gb IBM IDE drives.
Is it possible to have more than two IDE drives?
If not, I guess I have to either buy a SCSI or change one of the 15gb for a bigger one.
Are there any limitations when combining two IDE drives; which has to be the master, which has to store the OS etc.?
markbingo
1st Oct 2001, 23:37
Most standard motherboards have two IDE slots.
When you buy a PC it normally has primary channel for the HDD, and the secondary one for the CD-ROM.
You can buy "piggy back" cables to put up to 2 devices on each. I guess you already have one of these and probably have your two HDD's on the same cable.
If you have got only one device on the other cable ( i.e. CD-ROM ) you could add another HDD to it. Simply buy the "piggy back" cable, and plug it all together ( assuming you also have enough drive bays in your case to hold another HDD ! )
My config is 2x HDD on primary, and a CD_ROM drive and CD ReWriter on the other.
If I need more HDD, I will have to get a bigger HDD and pass on one of my others.
You can get 60Gb HDD's now for very little money.
SCSI is the other solution but because they are much quicker, they are also much more expensive.
I use my CD-Rewriter for extra HDD space. I move all my archive data onto read/write CD's and file them away. If I need the data, I just pop them in the drive. In a way that is giving me unlimited extra HDD space, but only 750Mb(ish) at a time. ( you can read and write too and from them like a normal HDD )
If you haven't got a CD-Burner, and you have spare capacity on an IDE, it would be money well spent to buy one of those instead of another HDD. They have a lot of extra uses too !
www.scan.co.uk (http://www.scan.co.uk) do good deals on CD writers. Thats where I got mine from.
Good luck
Bingo
:cool: