Mobo doesn't have enough IDE connections for my drives. What do I need?

[imported_Stew]

Should I buy some sort of PCI card to support my extra IDE devices, or is there some kind of splitter that would work?

Here's my setup:

Devices:
2x SATA HDDs
1x IDE/PATA HDD
2x IDE Optical drive

Mobo connections:
-Lots of SATA
-1x IDE

 

[Modelworks]

The cheapest way would be to replace the optical drives with new sata drives. You can get them at microcenter for $25 . Other ways would be to try to find pci cards, but really you run into chipset issues with that and they will likely cost more than the sata drives.
http://www.microcenter.com/sin...tml?product_id=0293049

 

[PottedMeat]

Originally posted by: Modelworks
The cheapest way would be to replace the optical drives with new sata drives. You can get them at microcenter for $25 . Other ways would be to try to find pci cards, but really you run into chipset issues with that and they will likely cost more than the sata drives.
http://www.microcenter.com/sin...tml?product_id=0293049

yep, just spring for a new sata dvdrw.
there are sata-ide adapters but i've never used them. i've used silicon image PCI-IDE 2 channel cards and haven't had any problems.

 

[vailr]

The single IDE connector should support the 2 IDE optical drives: 1 Master & 1 Slave (set by jumpers).
Then put the IDE hard drive in an external USB 2.0 housing.
But: don't mix optical and hard drive on the same IDE port.

 

[Slugbait]

Originally posted by: vailr
The single IDE connector should support the 2 IDE optical drives: 1 Master & 1 Slave (set by jumpers).
Then put the IDE hard drive in an external USB 2.0 housing.
But: don't mix optical and hard drive on the same IDE port.

Certainly not from a performance standpoint. If using both optical drives at the same time on the same channel, such as ripping with one while playing something on the other, they have to share I/O.

So you do want to mix an optical drive and hard drive on the same IDE port. As long as you don't rip from the IDE optical to the IDE hard drive, you're fine.

Replacing one of the IDE opticals with a SATA version is the best option, for both perf and cost.

 

[RebateMonger]

Well, you COULD add a PCI IDE controller card. Be aware that many such controller cards don't support optical drives, only hard drives. You could put your optical drives on the built-in IDE controller and put the hard drive on the PCI controller.

But if you are booting from that IDE drive, you may have problems getting the PC to boot because of the differing IDE controller chipset. If it's a secondary disk, then you can add the new IDE controller drivers to Windows and just hook up the IDE disk.