Are computers limited to 1 Slave Drive?

J

Jamin43

banned
I've added a Second HDD as a slave drive to a DELL PC in the past. It was petty simple b/c there was an empty plug - and it was pretty simple plug and play with a few other steps with instructions on Dell and the HDD manual?

My quesiton is - if I had wanted to add a 3rd HDD - as a secondary slave drive - would that have been possible? Or are PC's limited to one slave drive per PC.

Would I have had to get a different cable to connect the drive or how would that work?

Thanks
 
You are limited to 1 master and 1 slave per PATA cable.
Most motherboards have at least 2 slots for a PATA cable (newer motherboards have 1 PATA but they have about 6 to 8 SATA)

You if you are running out of space to add hard drives, you could always get a PCI controller card.
 
gamerman4 said:
You are limited to 1 master and 1 slave per PATA cable.
Most motherboards have at least 2 slots for a PATA cable (newer motherboards have 1 PATA but they have about 6 to 8 SATA)

You if you are running out of space to add hard drives, you could always get a PCI controller card.
Click to expand...

Got it

And each PATA can connect to a HDD and you can add as many drives as you want / can fit in your case - as you have available SATA plugs on your MOBO?

Is that correct?
 
Jamin43 said:
Got it

And each PATA can connect to a HDD and you can add as many drives as you want / can fit in your case - as you have available SATA plugs on your MOBO?

Is that correct?
Click to expand...

No, each PATA or IDE can handle two drives. Since there are 2 IDE controllers on most IDE mainboards that is a limit of 4 drives. SATA is another issue. You can have as many drives as you have sata connectors - one drive per connector. Most mainboards have 4-6 sata connectors. Server boards with 16 connectors aren't that uncommon. If you are buying new drives, avoid IDE if you can. It is a technology that is end of life. Some of the latest mainboards don't even have IDE controllers any longer.
 
fmw said:
No, each PATA or IDE can handle two drives. Since there are 2 IDE controllers on most IDE mainboards that is a limit of 4 drives. SATA is another issue. You can have as many drives as you have sata connectors - one drive per connector. Most mainboards have 4-6 sata connectors. Server boards with 16 connectors aren't that uncommon.
Click to expand...

I think we were on the same page. You just articulated it more clearly with your post. :good:
 
Remember, only PATA uses the Slave/Master system.
SATA cables are only 1 hard drive per connection, most modern hard drives use SATA because it is newer and capable of faster speeds.
 
So if building a new PC from scratch - I should ignore the PATA alltogether and use SATA because it's faster.
 
Well I use PATA for CD/DVD drives because speed doesn't matter as much for them. I then use SATA for my hard drives.
 
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