Third HD?

[theeaterofshades]

Hey all. I am looking to get a new Hard drive (160 - 200 GB)to pair up with my 80 GB WD SE and my 20 MB IBM. I have just started using pinnacle Studio 9 for creating DVDs of video shot of our baby daughter. I found out quickly that i need more room to do this. I would like to add this as drive #3. I already am using all 4 of my Asus P4PE motherboard's UltraDMA "connections": 2 to current HDs, 1 to CD-RW, 1 to DVD-RW. The question is what HD to go with, and thus what controller card?

1. Do I go with an EIDE/ATA/UltraDMA controller and a standard type HD

2. do i get a SATA controller card and a SATA HD?

3. Once #1/#2 are decided what controller and which HD do you recommend?

Thanks everyone!
_______________________________
2.4GHz PI V
Asus P4PE
1GB of RAM
IBM 20GB HD 75GXP(DTLA-307020)
WD Caviar SE 80GB HD 7600
Liteon DVD +/- RW LDW-411s
Liteon CDRW LTR-48246s
Sapphire Radeon 9500 Pro
Audigy II ZS
Logitech z5300's
HP DJ 722c
HP photosmart 7960
HP Scanjet 4470c
Dell Axim
Canon Digital Rebel

 

[DaveSimmons]

I use a Promise IDE controller in my music server box, it's worked great under Win2000.

Samsung drives are quiet and cheap, but you might just buy whatever there is a Hot Deal on (see that forum) though s 3-year warranty is worth paying extra for.

 

[Pauli]

You could retire your CD-RW drive and just use the DVD burner to burn everything, that's what I did.

 

[SilentZero]

Ok, first thing first. Do you plan on keeping this HD around for awhile? If so, id definately go SATA. Most of the newer mobo's out today come SATA compliant, so in terms of the future, SATA is the way to go. As DaveSimmons said, the Promise PCI controllers work great. If it were my money Id go that route. As far as the controller, ive used the promise TX4 which was great ($64), and theres even the promise TX2 plus ($41), the choice depends on how many drives you want to connect (TX4 = 4 drives , TX2 plus = 2). Of course there are a ton of other cards out there, but ive just had great experiences with the promise cards (except with my MSI onboard promise controller). Finally, as far as the drive. You could never go wrong with a Seagate 160mb SATA drive (which is about $9 more than the IDE model) or the Western Digi. 160gb or 200gb SATA drives (which are about $9-10 more than the IDE models).
From my experience Seagate and WD are the best drives around (with a few exceptions of course), and Id go with either or. Good luck!

 

[oldman420]

promise ide pci controller will work perfect

 

[oldman420]

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=45&threadid=1302512&enterthread=y

 

[Cheetah8799]

Originally posted by: Pauli
You could retire your CD-RW drive and just use the DVD burner to burn everything, that's what I did.

Same here. No need for 2 devices capable of burning CDs.

 

[Ryoga]

Your other option is to use a USB2.0 drive enclosure. That would give you the advantage of having an external HDD for portability.

 

[ROJAS]

Get the Promise ultra133 controller card for ide. Maxtor has a controller card out ultra133 with both sata and ide connectors.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: Cheetah8799

Originally posted by: Pauli
You could retire your CD-RW drive and just use the DVD burner to burn everything, that's what I did.

Same here. No need for 2 devices capable of burning CDs.

You're kidding me, right? Why put additonal wear+tear on your DVD-writer, just to burn CDs? Not to mention, DVD writers burn CDs at much slower speeds than CD writers do. I haven't yet seen a DVD writer capable of burning at 52X speed to CD-Rs. Sometimes high-speed disc-to-disc duplication is a useful thing. (I usually do it at 32X, not 52X, but still, most DVD burners only go to 16X or 24X CD-R writing speeds.)
Plus, in a pinch, you could burn two things at once, having two burners.

The only reason that I could see, for removing your CD burner when you get a DVD burner, is if you only have a limited number of drive bays or power connectors to attach it, or your CD burner is an older, slower model, not a more up-to-date 52X model.

I might be slightly on the extreme end of this seperate-drive spectrum, as I have a seperate CD reader, writer, and DVD reader (no writer yet, but soon).

In the past, I've watched DVD movies, whilst burning CDs at high-speed disc-to-disc. Try that without seperate drives.

Edit: I seemed to have gotten off-topic a bit, sorry. I see that this thread was about adding a 3rd HD, on a system that had all mobo IDE ports full-up. My suggestion is to do what I've done for a long time - move your HDs onto a PCI IDE controller card, and use the mobo ports for opticals. Having only 2 IDE ports/4 device support, just isn't enough these days. I'm using a Promise Ultra100 TX2 right now. (There is another advantage to doing this - if/when you upgrade or change motherboards, so long as your OS install and PCI IDE controller get moved together, it's a relative piece of cake to transfer W2K/XP installations to new hardware. No issues with BSODs and "INACCESSABLE_BOOT_DEVICE" errors.)

 

[thorin]

Why do you have two identical sets of system specs? (One woulda been bad enough). Head on over to System Rigs and setup your stuff there then link to it....

If you have a DVDRW why not drop the CDRW since most DVDRW can also do CDRW? And throw in another PATA Disk without buying an additional controller.

Thorin

 

[Pauli]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry

Originally posted by: Cheetah8799

Originally posted by: Pauli
You could retire your CD-RW drive and just use the DVD burner to burn everything, that's what I did.

Same here. No need for 2 devices capable of burning CDs.

You're kidding me, right? Why put additonal wear+tear on your DVD-writer, just to burn CDs? Not to mention, DVD writers burn CDs at much slower speeds than CD writers do. I haven't yet seen a DVD writer capable of burning at 52X speed to CD-Rs. Sometimes high-speed disc-to-disc duplication is a useful thing. (I usually do it at 32X, not 52X, but still, most DVD burners only go to 16X or 24X CD-R writing speeds.)
Plus, in a pinch, you could burn two things at once, having two burners.

The only reason that I could see, for removing your CD burner when you get a DVD burner, is if you only have a limited number of drive bays or power connectors to attach it, or your CD burner is an older, slower model, not a more up-to-date 52X model.

I might be slightly on the extreme end of this seperate-drive spectrum, as I have a seperate CD reader, writer, and DVD reader (no writer yet, but soon).

In the past, I've watched DVD movies, whilst burning CDs at high-speed disc-to-disc. Try that without seperate drives.

Edit: I seemed to have gotten off-topic a bit, sorry. I see that this thread was about adding a 3rd HD, on a system that had all mobo IDE ports full-up. My suggestion is to do what I've done for a long time - move your HDs onto a PCI IDE controller card, and use the mobo ports for opticals. Having only 2 IDE ports/4 device support, just isn't enough these days. I'm using a Promise Ultra100 TX2 right now. (There is another advantage to doing this - if/when you upgrade or change motherboards, so long as your OS install and PCI IDE controller get moved together, it's a relative piece of cake to transfer W2K/XP installations to new hardware. No issues with BSODs and "INACCESSABLE_BOOT_DEVICE" errors.)

No, actually I'm not kidding.

Point 1: Wear and tear on DVD burner.
Non-issue. These things are so cheap nowadays, even if this extra usage does cause the DVD burner go bad, it's a good excuse to go out and get a newer, faster model. (unless, of course, he has the latest dual layer burner right now).

Point 2: DVD burners burn at much slower speed than CD burners.
A 24X CD-burning DVD-writer will burn an 80-minute CD in about 4 minutes, a 52X CD burner will burn the same CD in a little over 2 minutes. For a few people, this might be an issue. For most users, this doesn't qualify as "much" slower speed. Sure 52X sounds alot faster than 24X, but in terms of real-world time, it really isn't that big of a deal.

Point 3: Burning 2 CD's at the same time. Watching a DVD while burning a CD.
Not many of us really benefit from this capability. For most users, this is a non-issue.


Ok, sure, he would give up some benefits if he ditches the CD burner. However, in my mind, adding another controller is adding another level of complexity to the system that many of us would rather do without. It's all about tradeoffs -- for me, it was a no-brainer to go with a single burner setup.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: Pauli
No, actually I'm not kidding.

Point 1: Wear and tear on DVD burner.
Non-issue. These things are so cheap nowadays, even if this extra usage does cause the DVD burner go bad, it's a good excuse to go out and get a newer, faster model. (unless, of course, he has the latest dual layer burner right now).

Well, let's just agree to disagree on this point, becuase I know that there are two schools of thought on this, and neither is really all that "provable" over another. This argument might be slightly more persuasive to someone that paid $300 for a 2x DVD burner, than someone who paid only $80 for an 8x dual-format DVD burner. I guess I just tend to try to take care of my hardware and keep it going as long as possible, and I assume that spreading out the wear and tear helps to do that.

Originally posted by: Pauli
Point 2: DVD burners burn at much slower speed than CD burners.
A 24X CD-burning DVD-writer will burn an 80-minute CD in about 4 minutes, a 52X CD burner will burn the same CD in a little over 2 minutes. For a few people, this might be an issue. For most users, this doesn't qualify as "much" slower speed. Sure 52X sounds alot faster than 24X, but in terms of real-world time, it really isn't that big of a deal.

Well, it's a full 100% difference to me, it's double the throughput if I need to burn several CDs in a row.
To some people, an 8x DVD isn't meaningfully faster than a 4x DVD burner, nor is a P4 2.8Ghz meaningfully faster than a P3 1.4Ghz. For me it is. I felt that I should mention that in my prior post, because some people may not be aware that DVD burners burn CDs at "much slower" speeds.

Originally posted by: Pauli
Point 3: Burning 2 CD's at the same time. Watching a DVD while burning a CD.
Not many of us really benefit from this capability. For most users, this is a non-issue.

I agree. I'm not actually like "most users", I tend to be a bit hard on my computer systems, and multi-task devices heavily.

Originally posted by: Pauli
Ok, sure, he would give up some benefits if he ditches the CD burner. However, in my mind, adding another controller is adding another level of complexity to the system that many of us would rather do without. It's all about tradeoffs -- for me, it was a no-brainer to go with a single burner setup.

That's why I mentioned the fact that there is a very real and tangible benefit to putting your primary bootable HDs containing a W2K/XP OS installation on a PCI IDE controller. Ease of migration to other motherboards and hardware configs is unbeliveable, as compared to what most people have to do though, either a re-installation or a repair install under XP, followed by re-installing all of the later patches/hotfixes. Why be forced to "fix" what isn't broke? On the whole, I've found that this reduces the overall complexity of my configuration. Plus, I can use 48-bit LBA HDs with older Win9x OSes with impunity, with my Promise controller card.

 

[0roo0roo]

cheap silicon image controllers work for me. i got 4hd's

 

[SickBeast]

I have an interesting suggestion:

Buy a 250GB IDE HD. Then sell your 80GB and 20GB drives to make up the price difference.

Three hard drives is ludicrous in one system that only has IDE in all honesty, especially when one of them is only 20GB. I'm sure you could live without that to make room for the new 160GB one. That would be the simple solution in all honesty.