Hard Drive Question - How many can you have?

C

Ceratapetalum

New Member
Good evening computer wizards and wizardettes,

Got a few questions for you, please bear with me as i am not remotely close to a computer genius.................

Essentially i have a rather large music collection, its almost 250 Gig and I need to ensure i have it backed for obvious reasons. Also, recently i have had a few unexpected deaths amongst my external hard drives.

Anyway, i have one 250gig drive in my PC and i managed to put in another 250gig drive as a Slave today, all is working perfectly.

My question is, how many more drives can i put into my PC?

I assume this means my one data cable is now full with the two above mentioned drives on it.

I have another space for an IDE, which my CD/DVD drive data cable is plugged into. It does have a spare pin on it same as the one i connected the Slave drive to.
Would it be possible or wise to connect another 250 gig drive to this and if so would it function?

There are only these two IDE plugs, i also have the FDD plug with nothing connected to it. Could this be used for another hard drive?

Lastely, can i remove the slave drive i have installed today once it is full then connect a new drive to the same spot and assign it with another drive letter and keep doing this as many times as necessary. If i do this will the pC be OK with it as it seems like a cheap and easy way to solve my back up issues. I dontmind putting drives in and out if its as easy as it was to install the one i did today.

I must sound completely bonkers, any advice, tips and help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance................x:)
 
You can slave another ide drive to the cd/dvd drive on the secondary cable. But that can slow down your performance at times when trying to access files there and load files from it or the other drive slaved to primary host drive. No ide drive will connect to a floppy cable. If your board has SATA capabilty with an onboard controller you can add more drives there for storing addtional files. You can also go with larger ide drives.

Many are now using external usb drives to store larger amounts of files and data. Those simply plug into a usb port. With a dvd burner you can also create data dvds for additional storage if you have the right software. One free cd/dvd burning software is called BurnOn found at http://www.burnworld.com/burnoncddvd/
 
You can only have 4 devices plugged into the IDE ports, which is usually either 2 HDD and 2 CD/DVD Drives, or 3 HDD and 1 CD/DVD Drive. The floppy is just for a floppy drive, you cant install a HDD there.

If you really want to add more drives, you should look into a SATA controller, since you can add many more of those at a time.
 
No worries thanks ladies and gents for that, i understand the external hard drives, i have a Lacie 250 gig and also an Iomega 120 gig.

It may sound like alto of storage, especially when i have two 250 gig drives in my PC now but its not enough.

Reason being, my music collection is almost 250 gig, if i have it on my PC and also on the slave on my PC thats all good and gives me a backup. However, it does not allow for the back up of my regular files, say 30 gig, which i can use the 120 gig Iomeag for.

That leaves the 250gig Lacie, well i need that seperate for swapping MP3 collections. I fill it with my collection, give it to someone else who then down loads it then copies their collection onto it. I then sift through their collection and get rid of all the double ups and keep all the higher bit albums and ones i dont have to increase my quality and collection.

Soooooo, to expand my collection further i will need another 250 gig drive at least, maybe two, to make sure whatever i get from friends will be stored and also backed up. With 250 gig already on the PC and duplicated on the backup 250 gig it leaves no room for expansion so i will be adding another one.

So sounds like slaving the third to the CD/DVD is not the ideal and could slow my PC down, dont really want that!!!

I understand that i could get bigger IDE drives but, i would rather have a few more smaller drives. Not sure if that is a logical approach?
Also i am buying the 250 gig Seagate IDE's for $104.00 AUD so they are cheap.

So, please tell me more about the SATA controller. That sounds like it would be the most suitable.
How much?
Could a novice like myself put it in or would i get this done at the computer shop?
How do i find out if my PC has SATA capability?
If it doesnt what can i do to sort it out.

Bring on Blue Ray Burners i say, 50 gig to one DVD and all my problems will be solved!!!

GIVE ME MORE STORAGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks again if you are able to help.
 
Also, forgot to ask.............

What about the theory of pulling out the 250 Gig Slave drive and then simply putting in another 250 gig drive and filling that as a backup.

It would be like using an external drive i guess but would require me to take off the computer housing each time i needed to back up. Taking off the housing is pretty simple and quick so i dont see that as much of a problem.

Do any of you do this?

Is it a sensible approach, it sounds straight forward to me but i'd like your thoughts.

The only problem i can see if making sure the PC recognises the different hard drives each time i connect them to the Slave data cable. If i assinged a different letter to each drive then marked the drive with that letter it would seem fool proof?

What da ya think about that?
 
What it sounds like you could use is a removable drive bay. They aren't that popular anymore, but they were about 15 years ago. You just power down the computer, pull the tray out and swap the drives. Buy several 250MB drives, label them and just keep swapping them.
 
another cost effective idea is buy a 3.5" external enclosure which converts ac power to molex and ide signal to firewire or usb
you can then buy cheap, large, ide hard drives and plug them into the external box
im not sure how easy it is to swap but it is certainly a good sight cheaper than buying external drives
also if you dont want to swap, you can get many of those boxes (they are like $30 ebay)
 
With SATA drives added to the system as well as larger ide drives you can increase capacity for each drive itself. I have thinking about the addition of four 400gb sata drives in the case here since I multi OS drives and need more space for Linux along with MS files. I know Western Digital has 320gb ide drives and Seagate carries 500 sata drives available. When you mention adding 30gb to the 250gb that equals 280gb.

You can also add drives using a controller card for SATA/RAID setups and some boards will handle 4 sata HDs. No dvd-rs go anywhere near 50gb at this time. But piling one drive after another on shelves to store files also has it's own limitations since you are dealing with magnetic storage devices. One old method was storing data and files on tape cartridges. But access times there were super slow. How about a server case? You can put a large number of large capacity drives into one of those.
 
PC eye said:
But piling one drive after another on shelves to store files also has it's own limitations since you are dealing with magnetic storage devices.
Click to expand...

Limitations such as what? Don't place them next to a big magnet? hehe. I have three sitting here right beside me as I'm typing this piled on top of each other. I have another sitting under a fan on one of the other desks. I did have several more on a shelf and some in a box. They're not as fragile as people think. Obviously you don't want to drop them or anything though. That wouldn't be a good idea. lol.

Anyways, increasing the capacity of the drive is not a bad idea, but I'm not too keen on the recommendation of adding a bunch of controller cards for the simple reasons that a) most cases can't hold too many drives and b) the more drives you have in the case, the more heat you generate. Stacking them on top of each other in the case is a bad idea and makes them prone to failure.
 
SirKenin said:
Limitations such as what? Don't place them next to a big magnet? hehe. I have three sitting here right beside me as I'm typing this piled on top of each other. I have another sitting under a fan on one of the other desks. I did have several more on a shelf and some in a box. They're not as fragile as people think. Obviously you don't want to drop them or anything though. That wouldn't be a good idea. lol.

Anyways, increasing the capacity of the drive is not a bad idea, but I'm not too keen on the recommendation of adding a bunch of controller cards for the simple reasons that a) most cases can't hold too many drives and b) the more drives you have in the case, the more heat you generate. Stacking them on top of each other in the case is a bad idea and makes them prone to failure.
Click to expand...

Don't forget the main question. "My question is, how many more drives can i put into my PC?"

With a full tower case and quire a bit more cooling you have room there for not only the 3 ide drives that would go into a smaller case but extra space for additional 4 to 5 SATA drives if the board installed has the controllers. The only time for addon controller cards would be the lack of onboard or using other then usb adapters.

A server build would far better handle the power needs for a large number of internal drives. But even with that backing up files onto removable media prevents losses seen when drives crap out! For music make a cd collect and the need for storage space with countless hard drives drops right off.
 
Hey thanks everyone, really appreaciate all the help.

PC Eye, i dont want to sound like a smart a$$ but this is where i got the info about 50gig DVD's from. Have a look they do exist.

http://www.blu-ray.com/images/media/panasonic.jpg

and this is the web site
http://www.blu-ray.com/media/

My understanding is that they are not too far from the market place? But like i've said i am no expert when it comes to things computerish. Awsome sight and well worth some time checking out, seems like the future to me and i can't wait. Can you imagine, 50gig on one DVD, its unbelivealbe. Imagine the piracy issues they are going to have.....................mind boggling really.

But, back to my storage situation.

PC Eye - You said 'You can also add drives using a controller card for SATA/RAID setups and some boards will handle 4 sata HDs'.
I hear what your saying and it sounds good to me. How do i find out the capacity of my board to see if i can do this?
And how much is one of these controller cards?
And could i put it in myself?

500r420 - i am not following entirely. Are you saying if i did as you say then i could buy cheap IDE drives off Ebay for $30.00?
Are you saying a 250gig drive for $30.00 AUD?
I am buying the Seagate Barracuda 250 gig drives for $104.00 AUD brand new.
Can you please post a link to what you are describing on Ebay so i understand.

Everyone - Ok, i now have two 250gig drives in my PC. When i installed the Slave on the weekend i left a reasonable gap in the PC btween the two drives because as you say they generate heat. So, at what point do i need to consider extra cooling in my system. Can it handle two drives easily? If i was to drop a third into it how would that go?

I want someone to answer this question: Can i simply pull out the Slave drive i have in the PC, put in a new one in the exact location, assign it a different drive letter, activate Seagates installion for new hard drive and away it will go. To be removed again once full?
Because if i can do this, to me, it sounds like its a simple and easy way for backing up data. Whip out the slave, drop in the new drive, back up the data and then whip it out and put back the original Slave drive.

I look forward to your responses, once again huge thanks guys and girls :D
 
For one thing it's no surprise to see larger capacity disks available or soon to be available. At any time you can reassign a drive letter on any drive. You can change the host primary to J or K if you prefer. How Windows and other things will run is a different matter.

(Example on drive letter assignment)
If you have a cd drive as D and a dvd drive as E you assign the second hard drive as F, G, H, I, J, K, etc. without any problems. You simply go into Control Panel and look for the "Administrative Tools" icon and double click on that. Once you are inside that section look for the "Computer Management" icon and again double click on that to open another section.

On the left hand side there look for "Disk Management" in the listing there. Double click on that and look for the drives listed on the right side. Note the Drive #0 and Drive #1 will be dark colored rectangular block under the readily identifiable drives. Simply right click on the drive listing above those to choose the "drive letters, paths" from the properties menu to reassign the current letter to another.

Note one thing here however. It won't work if another is currently using the same letter. You would have to reassign the other drive's letter first. One other thing to note is that changing drive letters for the next drive used won;t make a difference when you reinstall a drive already used.
 
Thanks PC Eye, i think thats going to be the most efficient, cheapest and best method to do my backups. If i just keep two drives in the PC at any one time and leave the data cable with the CD/DVD drive empty, so she runs reasonably well i should be fine.

Think i'll just go and buy another two 250gig drives this weekend keep them as the back up drives and just drop them into the Slave cable when i want to back up. Leave the two in my PC for permanent accessable files which will give me about 460gig of space and i'll also have the external portable 250gig Lacie for doing exchanges with other people.

The two additional 250gig Seagates are onloy going to cost me $104.00 each so really its got to be the cheapest option.

Hang on, problem, how do i back up the original Salve drive if i am taking it out to drop the back up drives in. Hmmmmmmm.
I'll have to back that up to the external drive, then pull out the original Slave drive and then copy from the external to the spare drive which will now be in the PC.
Or, whats inside of the Lacie external hard drive. Can i pull it apart and drop one of the back up drives into it so i can then copy directly from the Slave onto the back up drive. Actually, that would be the solution. If it is possible?
Use the external portable drive as the point at which i put in and take out the back up drives. This way i can leave my two originals in the PC.
Can this be done?
Anyone know what is inside an external drive?
Can i simply open it up, pull out the existing dirve, plug in the backup drive like i would have on the PC in the Slave plug?

Bloody hell, all this just to back stuff up!!!

What do you think about that?
 
SirKenin said:
Get a removable drive tray for Pete's sake. That way you're not taking your case apart and screwing around every time you want to back something up. http://
Click to expand...

Whaaat was that? Excuse me if I was busy burning a data dvd and not pulling drives out of cases. It's far less costly and they can be replaced easier with a far lower cost. Plus you can burn any combination of files of files onto them along with labeling which one has what on where.

But then maybe someone wants to increase capacity inside the case as well as outside of if? You first have to know the total of how much you are trying to store
 
If you get an RW that would work, but it's slow and the disks only last so long. Otherwise you get this huge pile of useless disks with outdated files on them. I have more than my fair share of those.
 
Do you want 100 hard drives laying around without knowing which one has what on it? It mainly depends on just how much is being stored to find the best way to decide what method of storage will work out the best. At one time a 200mb hard drive was enourmous in size. Now a 200gb drive is a MID SIZE ONLY type of drive available. 250gb of files easily fits on a 320gb, 400gb, 500gb, and even larger sata drive. If you are planning "terabytes" of data then network into a server setup with a large number of large capacity drives.
 
I was in Best Buy a couple of weeks age and one of the salemen was trying to sell me on a new computer. He showed me one that is out or either coming out real soon with a 500GB HDD. For a little more $ you can upgrade that HDD to a one Terabite drive. Isn't that like 1000GB?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top