Newbie please help, No. of hard drives

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daishion

New Member
How many hard drives and optical drives can you hook up to a mobo. I was reading in some forum that this guy hooked up 4 hard drives and three optical drives. I am about to start building my first computer and was wondering about this. I know this question has probably been asked 600 times, if some one would direct me to were it has been asked before that would be fine. I was also wondering does it vary from mobo to mobo? Thanks
 
daishion said:
How many hard drives and optical drives can you hook up to a mobo. I was reading in some forum that this guy hooked up 4 hard drives and three optical drives. I am about to start building my first computer and was wondering about this. I know this question has probably been asked 600 times, if some one would direct me to were it has been asked before that would be fine. I was also wondering does it vary from mobo to mobo? Thanks
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It does vary from Mobo to Mobo if you dont put any SCSI cards in it. Otherwise, if you dont mind sucking up your PCI slots, you can put several drives in there, albeit slower performing than if it were on your IDE bus.
 
With jsut PCI, you can hook up to 4 drives (without any additional hardware) this includes optical drives and hard drives. If you have SATA on your mobo, then you can hook up at least 2 hard drives via SATA, and 2 hard drives via EIDE, and 2 optical drives via IDE. Otherwise you can get a SCSI card to be able to have more.
 
My motherboard has 4 SATA connections and 2 PATA connections so with 2 devices per PATA I could theoretically have 8 devices connected.
 
one way to get that many drives on on motherboard iis to have a scsi card.
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Another way is to plug them in :P

With jsut PCI, you can hook up to 4 drives
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PCI?

If you have SATA on your mobo, then you can hook up at least 2 hard drives via SATA
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Assuming you have two SATA connectors

My motherboard has 4 SATA connections and 2 PATA connections so with 2 devices per PATA I could theoretically have 8 devices connected.
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Quite correct :)
 
My storage specs:

2 x UltraDMA 100/66/33
2 x Serial ATA, RAID 0, 1

1) What is UltraDMA?
2) Can I plug a SATA in an UltraDMA?
3) Does that mean I can have 4 hard drives? 2 SATA and 2 UltraDMA (if the answer for the question above is negative)?
 
1. UltraDMA is your standard PATA connection, you can get 2 drives per connector.
2. SATA can't plug into UltraDMA
3. You can have 6 drives, 2 SATA and 4 UltraDMA
 

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As a side note - you can buy converters that make it possible to use a PATA hard drive with a SATA motherboard connection.
 
I would assume so

On your IDE cables or pata you can have 2 optical devices and 2 hdd....then on the sata cables you can hook up an additional 2 hdd :)
 
What is UltraDMA?
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UltraDMA ... a type of transfer specification

Can I plug a SATA in an UltraDMA?
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SATA is a physical connection specifcation. UDMA is a transfer specification so they dont have anything to do with each other (if I understand ur intended question correctly, the answer is probably a no although it can easily be a yes)

Does that mean I can have 4 hard drives? 2 SATA and 2 UltraDMA (if the answer for the question above is negative)?
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You can have size. For from the "UDMA" and two from the "SATA"

But does that mean I can plug an HDD on the same cable as the one I use to plug my optical drives?
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Yes
 
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