anyone has more than 4 IDE devices?

[andylawcc]

what's up with so many motherboards nowaday equipped with ATA100 controller and RAID..
i am wondering anyone fully utilize them...

 

[Paul]

I have a Promise Ultra-66 Card

3 HD
1 CD-ROM
1 CD R/W
1 ZIP Drive

Works great! Need a bigger case though...

 

[Viper GTS]

Yes, you can use more than four devices. I currently have 5 in my system, & I'm looking to add a 6th.

In theory I could have up to 8.

Viper GTS

 

[LordSandMan]

I've got a BP6 that had an onboard HPT controller, but the controller died. I put in a SIIG ata100 controller. I've got 5-20Gig maxtors in a softRAID 5, 1-6Gig to boot from and a 40x CD

 

[konichiwa]

I've got:

3HDD
1CDROM
1CDRW
1ZIP

 

[Valhalla2000]

Yup
I have an ABIT IDE RAID

1 DVD-ROM
1 CD-RW
4 HDD
1 ZIP
(and an extra CD-ROM)

 

[Gatsby]

I could have plenty more.

Only have 4 but I do have 2 entire ata 66 chains and 4 slaves available.

Gatsby

 

[Soccerman]

if I ever plan on getting more then 4 IDE devices in one computer, I'll have to go SCSI... I have 3 currently (1 DVDROM, 1CDRW, and 1 4.3 gig HD.. u guessed it, my next drive will be another HD!), and 4 is as high as I'm going to go even though I have both an ATA66 card, and onboard ATA33.

unless ATA Serial can come out and back up it's grand claims, I'm going to have to go SCSI in the near future.

 

[Lore]

I thought (based on architectural limits) that systems could only have one primary IDE channel and one secondary IDE channel (with two devices on each channel). Someone explained to me that in practice if you had more than two channels it might work, but if you start copying files from say, channel 2 to channel 4, you'd start getting problems.

Can anyone explain this to me?

 

[spamboy]

The reason these people have more channels is because they have an additional hard drive controller to the usual on-board UDMA 33 controller. They are putting up to four devices on each controller. They might have that second controller on a PCI card, or it might be built into their motherboard, too. In any event, they are seperate controllers with their own drivers, etc.

 

[Lore]

I know they have additional controllers.

However, I thought the architecture of the system wouldn't allow more than the equivalent of two channels in the system. Anyone care to explain _that_ facet of the setup?

 

[mikepeck]

I have 3 HD's, 1DVD and 1 CDRW

 

[bonkers325]

i got 3 does that count 🙂

cheers,
bonkers325

 

[Supradude]

3 CD Drives, 1 internal Zip, 2 HD's...
had to wait for the SA6R
1) Abit is my choice for Mobo's
2) no one else had an 815E board yet with 4 IDE's

 

[Mday]

i had, 3 HDDs, and 4 optical ROM drives.

notice HAD.

i have a second PC now ;-)

but still, 3 HDDs, and 2 ROM drives.

 

[superbaby]

I was wondering, if you had so many IDE devices, wouldn't you take a massive performance hit?

 

[Lore]

Has anyone tried copying across channels? Say, from Channel 1 HD to Channel 3 HD. (Onboard IDE to PCI UDMA66) No problems?