3 Hard drives?

[fstime]

I want to get a 3rd hard drive but my IDE cable only support 2, can anyone show me somewhere where I can buy a IDE cable that can run 3 hard drives, i've looked everywhere, thanks.

 

[ts3433]

I think you'll have to use the third on a second cable.

 

[WHipLAsh13]

IDE channels only support 2 drives per channel. Most motherboards have 2 channels though. The second channel usually has optical drives on it. If you only have one optical drive then you can put your 3rd hd on that channel If not you can purchase a eide controller from companies like Promise.

 

[Yzzim]

It's not possible. One HDD needs to be Master, one needs to be Slave, the third is an orphan.

With that being said, you could solder another ide connector onto a regular IDE cable and install a switch to turn one of the ide cables on/off....but then you could only use 2 hdds at a time.

 

[Colt45]

Yep, IDE architecture only supports 2 devices per channel, so you are more or less screwed.

 

[dnuggett]

The Promise controller is what you need.

 

[fstime]

My MSI s754 board has 3 IDE cable slots, I dont know what the 3rd is for its kinda seperated from the other two, could I use that?

 

[Daynja]

you can use the third slot with another cable.

 

[fstime]

My MSI s754 board has 3 IDE cable slots, I dont know what the 3rd is for its kinda seperated from the other two, could I use that? Could I also purchase a sata drive, would either of those work?

 

[CraigRT]

Originally posted by: BouZouki
My MSI s754 board has 3 IDE cable slots, I dont know what the 3rd is for its kinda seperated from the other two, could I use that? Could I also purchase a sata drive, would either of those work?

that's a RAID controller... not sure if you can use that or not.. might be able to use regular IDE drives, but I couldn't tell you.

 

[Safeway]

SATA would work. Or PATA + SATA converter.

 

[mordantmonkey]

if you have an open sata port then you can use it would be the simplest solution but probably not the cheapest. i think you could also use the raid controller and set all 3 of your drives as JBOD, but don't quote me on that since i've never set-up raid on IDE.

 

[fstime]

OK, since my motherboard has 2 sata slots I guess i'll get a sata hard drive, thanks. For installing sata hard drives, dont you have to load a floppy during windows boot up or somthing, can anyone fill me in before I make the purchase?

 

[Matt155]

If you have the MSI "K8T Neo-FIS2R" K8T800 Chipset Motherboard for AMD Socket 754 CPU, yes
you can add another hard drive but I think you have to load the driver for the promise controller.
"IDE: 3x ATA 133(1 from Promise 20378) up to 6 Devices "

 

[Qrilock]

No, not really.
Windows needs the SATA drivers on a floppy if you are installing windows to a SATA drive.
If you are adding a SATA drive to an existing machine it may need to load the drivers after windows starts up. It will detect the new hardware and probably want your mobo driver cd...

 

[fstime]

I lost the 2 floppys that came with my mother board. =( is there anything I can do?

 

[T9D]

I dont know about yours but I didn't need to install the SATA drivers. All I had to do was make sure SATA was chosen and set right in the bio's. So you might just want to check the instructions in your motherboard first.

 

[WHipLAsh13]

Originally posted by: BouZouki
I lost the 2 floppys that came with my mother board. =( is there anything I can do?

Goto MSI's website. You should never use the drivers that come with the motherboard anyhow. They are almost always out of date.

 

[fstime]

I installed the following for my mother board: VIA SATA RAID CONTROLLER AND WINXP PROMISE SATA 378 IDE CONTROLLER. Can I purchase my sata drive now? Its only gonna be used as a backup and im gonna format through windows so illl be okay right?

 

[fstime]

I also enabled some SATA crap in the motherboard bios. When I boot up my comp it says somthing about sata bios not found blah blah. I'm not to sure about this sata stuff.

 

[fstime]

Just looked again, I enabled Sata Controller IDE in the bios, there was this other menu where the options where none,sata,and raid, when I set it to sata it says Bios not found/installed, so I took that off and just left the sata controller enabled, it says Sata Drive not found, But im sure it wont say that when I get my HD, So everything look good to you guyys?

 

[JimPhelpsMI]

Hi , Whiplash has it right!!!!! Jim