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Adding more than 2 Hard Drives

S

StraightPipe

Golden Member
What are my options? I have 2 HD's on IDE cable now, and I want to add more. I have an assortment of sizes
6.4 GB
17 GB
27 GB
60 GB
80 GB

RAID? SCSI?

Do I just need an ATA controller card?

 
Depends what motherboard you have, as well as how many optical (CD, DVD) drives you have. Some motherboards have two extra IDE channels (2 drives per channel, so 4 extra) that can be used for RAID or regular IDE config. Assuming you have at least one optical drive, that means you have at least 6 drives. You'll need those 3rd and 4th channels, and if your motherboard doesn't have them, you could just pick up a cheap PC133 add-in card from Promise or Maxtor or something.

You could also do a RAID0, but either way it seems like you'll need an add-in card.
 
Just get a controller card. If you get a RAID card go with JABD (just a bunch of drives) to maximize capacity. Win2000 supports JABD in the software and you can do it with just a controller card.
 
yeah I have 2 IDE cables coming from the only 2 slots on my mobo.

one has DVD drive and CD-R Drive
and the other is 2 HD

So I'm currently full

I've been thinking ATA controller card, but am considering raid If i can get a speed bonus ( I am on a network and do lots of file sharing) my large HD's are all 7200RPM and the small 17 and 6.4 are 5400.

What kind of cost is associated with both options (since I already have the drives)

I would like to support 4 drives
does an ATA card go in a pci slot? or is it IDE from the mobo? from there would I need 2 IDE cables to hold 4 drives?

how easy is the setup? can I still share?(win XP)

oh yeah, where can I get some more info (faq) I read the faq's at anandtrech that describe the different raid types.
 
Promise TX2133 plugs into a PCI slot and lets you add 4 more IDE drives. (cheap but not RAID.)

Buy it from newegg.com, or check FS/FT for someone selling a TX2100 or 133 for less. Or check Hot Deals for a deal on a 120 to 160 drive that is bundled with the card, copy over your 2-4 smallest drives and sell them.
 
Originally posted by: Twilling
Just get a controller card. If you get a RAID card go with JABD (just a bunch of drives) to maximize capacity. Win2000 supports JABD in the software and you can do it with just a controller card.
Click to expand...

That would be JBOD, and that is a fine option, but if you want to just span the drives like that, just get a regular ATA controller card. since it would be cheaper. RAID is pretty simple to set up as long as you read all your instructions FIRST. Make sure you have everything planned out before you start. My friend spent hours upon hours trying to set up his RAID array because he thought he was too smart for instructions, I read the instructions first and set up my drives and Highpoint RAID controller in less than 15 minutes.

RAID is a very nice option, and I really like RAID0. You have all the capacity if your drives are the same size, and you get a nice speed boost.
 
I would like a speed boost, I have a reasonable network (4 PC's 1 laptop, 1 mac) and do lots of file sharing. I store all my movies, tv shows, and mp3's on my old system and pull across the network to view them now. I Think I'm going to throw my os on my80 and RAID0 the two 30GB7200's and just put the 60GB as the master on the old (downloading/storage) pc. that way I can keep all my media in the new system where it will be really quick.

whats a good card for this Raid 0?
 
RAID0 almost certainly won't help for a machine that's just being used as a network file server -- every individual drive is already reading at 2-5+ times the maximum speed that data can be pushed out over a 100mbit network card. You're also increasing the chance of losing all 60 GB from the 2 - 30 GB drives since if one drive goes you lose the data from both.

But if you want to set up RAID just for the fun / learning, promise and highpoint cards at newegg in the $50-100 range will do the job.
 
Does anyone know if it's possible to mix drive sizes? what happens to the extra?

Ie: can you raid 0 a 27 GB and a 17 GB?

Would it be more useful to put my OS on raid or to put all my Mp3's and Movies on raid?
 
Originally posted by: StraightPipe
Does anyone know if it's possible to mix drive sizes? what happens to the extra?

Ie: can you raid 0 a 27 GB and a 17 GB?

Would it be more useful to put my OS on raid or to put all my Mp3's and Movies on raid?
Click to expand...

From what I know, if you RAID hard drives with 2 different sizes, it takes the smaller size. Don't you need to also have the same manufacturers?

 
I have a 120 GB Maxtor and 40 GB IBM in RAID0. Total capacity is 80 GB, which is plenty, and the performance is amazing. Over 50,000 kb/s in Sisoft Sandra File System Benchmark.
 
Originally posted by: ketchup79
I have a 120 GB Maxtor and 40 GB IBM in RAID0. Total capacity is 80 GB, which is plenty, and the performance is amazing. Over 50,000 kb/s in Sisoft Sandra File System Benchmark.
Click to expand...
That sounds really messed up.
 
Originally posted by: OverVolt
Originally posted by: ketchup79
I have a 120 GB Maxtor and 40 GB IBM in RAID0. Total capacity is 80 GB, which is plenty, and the performance is amazing. Over 50,000 kb/s in Sisoft Sandra File System Benchmark.
Click to expand...
That sounds really messed up.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I thought so too until I tried it. But I had the IBM 120 GXP lying around, and got bored one day, and wounded up with a darn fast RAID0 array. Have you ever heard people try to say a RAID0 array won't work well unless the drives are exactly the same? Well, this shows that they are just full of fud. Even though I think this array would be scarry-fast if I ditched the IBM for another Maxtor DiamondMAX Plus 9. Hmm...
 
You're right ketchup79 on the fact that the Drives do not have to be the same, it's just suggested for Optimal performance and just think if you added another Maxtor you would gain 160Gigs + the 40 from the IBM although with another IBM it'll prolly run faster 😉
 
Originally posted by: ketchup79
Originally posted by: OverVolt
Originally posted by: ketchup79
I have a 120 GB Maxtor and 40 GB IBM in RAID0. Total capacity is 80 GB, which is plenty, and the performance is amazing. Over 50,000 kb/s in Sisoft Sandra File System Benchmark.
Click to expand...
That sounds really messed up.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I thought so too until I tried it. But I had the IBM 120 GXP lying around, and got bored one day, and wounded up with a darn fast RAID0 array. Have you ever heard people try to say a RAID0 array won't work well unless the drives are exactly the same? Well, this shows that they are just full of fud. Even though I think this array would be scarry-fast if I ditched the IBM for another Maxtor DiamondMAX Plus 9. Hmm...
Click to expand...

Yeah but i garuntee your maxtor is waiting for the seeks on that IBM every single time you access the array. As far as reads and writes go, unless youre storing DIVX movies, do your own rendering, or youre decoding the human genome. You arent using 50MB/sec 😉
 
Originally posted by: Acanthus
Originally posted by: ketchup79
Originally posted by: OverVolt
Originally posted by: ketchup79
I have a 120 GB Maxtor and 40 GB IBM in RAID0. Total capacity is 80 GB, which is plenty, and the performance is amazing. Over 50,000 kb/s in Sisoft Sandra File System Benchmark.
Click to expand...
That sounds really messed up.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I thought so too until I tried it. But I had the IBM 120 GXP lying around, and got bored one day, and wounded up with a darn fast RAID0 array. Have you ever heard people try to say a RAID0 array won't work well unless the drives are exactly the same? Well, this shows that they are just full of fud. Even though I think this array would be scarry-fast if I ditched the IBM for another Maxtor DiamondMAX Plus 9. Hmm...
Click to expand...

Yeah but i garuntee your maxtor is waiting for the seeks on that IBM every single time you access the array. As far as reads and writes go, unless youre storing DIVX movies, do your own rendering, or youre decoding the human genome. You arent using 50MB/sec 😉
Click to expand...

Actuallly, the array comes in handy when encoding home videos of my 1-year old. They grow up so darn fast, I need a hard drive array that can keep up with him 🙂
 
This is why I read this forum. I've been using RAID drives for years (first on Suns, then Dell workstations, now home PCs), and I thought not having them the same size was an absolute would not work scenario. Guess I should have tried it. I think I learn something new here every day.

-cap
 
Pick up a standard IDE controller card and you'll be able to add four more drives to it.

I don't normally bother with RAID.
 
Originally posted by: BFG10K
Pick up a standard IDE controller card and you'll be able to add four more drives to it.

I don't normally bother with RAID.
Click to expand...
I definitely wouldn't RAID what he has but as stated earlier a decent RAID card he could JBOD RAID 4 HD's to 1 large 1 and still have the other RAID solutions available later on.
 
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