How many IDE devices

[mooseAndSquirrel]

Going to build my own PC shortly. I know that most mobos come with 2 IDE channels and each can have 2 devices on them. Total of 4. But I probably need more - I'd like 4 HD's, DVD+RW, CDRW.

So, can I use a PCI add-in card that sets up additional IDE channels without conflicting with the ones on the mobo? If so, does anyone have a good recommendation for EIDE card? Do I have any worries to plan around - power supply, IRQ conflicts, heat, performance, BIOS levels and settings etc., or is the loss of some money and a PCI slot my only worries?

I've heard that some CDRW and DVD drives like to be the only ones on an IDE chain, so I could conceivably need 2 or 3 new chains. I'm probably not interested in RAID for protection (I keep good backups) but might go that route for performance. And while I do have a SCSI card, the extra cost for SCSI drives is making me think more fondly of EIDE.

Thanks

 

[SUOrangeman]

Promise seems to make the best non-RAID IDE cards. Well, they probably make the best IDE RAID cards too. 🙂

www.promise.com

-SUO

 

[TunaBoo]

Promise cards have given me a lot of grief, but they have given me less grief than any other brand. I only use 1 IDE device per chan, so I used to use a lot of add in cards 🙂 Now I try to use SCSI except for some optical and cheap storage drives.

 

[dcdomain]

The Promise cards are the way to go. I think the Maxtor ATA PCI card is a Promise card in disguise. I saw many being sold in the for sale/trade forums for cheap because of the rebates involved.

You can also just go ahead and buy a mobo with raid support, many of them can just be used as extra IDE channels. The ASUS A7V (KT133a) board I just bought has just that...