Can i add another Hard drive to my setup?

[kendogg]

Currently i have
Maxtor 20gb - primary master
wd 27gb - primary slave
plexwriter - secondary master
mitsumi 48x - secondary slave

would it be possible to add another hard drive??? what would it be set up as?? would i have to use a promise card of some sort?

 

[kendogg]

 

[sciencewhiz]

You would either have to use a promise card or you could replace your 20GB drive with at 60GB drive and gain 40GB. What do you need 47 GB for? do you have a lot of MP3s

 

[kendogg]

umm various movies, iso's, apps, and mp3s.

well i was over at buy.com and i was looking around for a promise card and there were different kinds, would this be good?

promise card

and if the hd is connected to a promise card what is it configured as? primary master slave? im not too familiar with this..

 

[dszd0g]

Adding an IDE controller card (like the promise) will give you addition IDE chains. The promise adds two more IDE chains for another primary master, primary slave, secondary master, secondary slave. So with a Promise card and your motherboard's chains you would have 4 chains for 8 devices using 4 IRQs since each chain uses an IRQ. At this point you will probably start sharing IRQs which most likely will not cause problems, but you may need to swap around the order of cards or the allocation of IRQs to slots in your BIOS if you do run into problems.

The one you pointed to is an Ultra 66. Promise also sells an Ultra 100. I don't think there is any real performance between ATA/66 and ATA/100 at this point. Promise also sells a FastTrack 66 and a FastTrack 100 IDE RAID controllers if you want to get into IDE RAID to improve performance. The Ultra 66 can be turned into a Fastrack 66 with a resister, a BIOS flash, and some fun with a soldering iron. If you are handy with a soldering iron this is a easy way to save some cash.

 

[hungrypete]

wow... if that was FAT16 you'd have like 23+ partitions.
better stay away from NT4

 

[dszd0g]

Well, or use NTFS if you are using NT4 which IMO you should do anyways.