Adding a New Harddrive

B

borracho79

New Member
I have a MSI MS6368 motherboard (http://www.abspc.com/specs/msi-m6368.htm) with two optical drives installed, and two harddrives installed on the IDE interfaces.

I´m considering to add a new harddrive to the existing configuration.

Should I buy a PCI IDE controller for the new drive or should I use an external harddrive?

Thanks
 
I would use a controller card but if you want portability buy a drive enclosure and an internal drive to put in it, it will be way cheaper than buying an external.
 
Speeds are usually greater with internal drives but to speed it up even more try getting a PCI SATA card and a SATA hard drive. Speed will be boosted somewhat and your futureproof.

While your at it you could investigate RAID, with all those hard drives sitting there it makes sense to do something constructive and beneficial with them
 
Keep in mind it's running off the PCI bus. The PCI 2.1 standard maxes out at 132MB/s (roughly ATA133) and that is for all devices in a PCI slot, so any extra speed you might get from SATA is wasted.
 
if the mobo already has intergrated sata you should go with an external sata drive enclosure, you can even make it a boot drive! the thing is you'll need to drag the red cable probably from behind your computer and out that way. external sata still runs at ata150 since it technically still directly connected to your mobo since is just outside your computer. :D
 
take a look at the board :P it doesn't have a SATA and theres no way it could without an addin card. It sports UltraDMA 66/33 interfaces unless he has the 686B which will take UltraDMA100
 
Harddrive upgrade

Thanks for all the replys.. I have been looking for the specific MOBO model, but it doesnt say whether is 686 or 686B in order to support UDMA100.

How should i proceed now?
 
Harddrive

I found out that my MOBO is version 686B, so should i go ahead an purchase a PCI IDE controller for UDMA 100 disks?
 
What size hardrives do you have already, if you have a small one, you might as well get a bigger one and sell the older one, that way you dont need to worry about buying a controller, or having it USB.
 
hardrive

I still have one PCI and one ISA slot free.. could i use the ISA slot or for an ide controller only the PCI will work?
 
I found out that my MOBO is version 686B, so should i go ahead an purchase a PCI IDE controller for UDMA 100 disks?
Click to expand...
That is only for the motherboard IDE controller, a PCI card will probably support 133. ATA133/100/66/33 are all compatible so it doesn't really matter what speed either end is, it will all work just at the slower speed.
I still have one PCI and one ISA slot free.. could i use the ISA slot or for an ide controller only the PCI will work?
Click to expand...
If you can find an ISA controller card yes you can use it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top