Adding IDE Drives

[Guest]

I have four IDE drives currently installed in my computer, A CD-RW drive,
DVD-ROM drive, and two 160GB Hard Drives (controlled by an ATA controller
card). The fact that I have controller card theoretically gives me the
ability to attach 8 IDE drives to my computer. However I'm hesitant to due to
addressing... will I run into addressing issues and conflicts if I try to add
drives beyond the four already installed?

 

[Leonard Severt [MSFT]]

I have four IDE drives currently installed in my computer, A CD-RW
drive, DVD-ROM drive, and two 160GB Hard Drives (controlled by an ATA
controller card). The fact that I have controller card theoretically
gives me the ability to attach 8 IDE drives to my computer. However
I'm hesitant to due to addressing... will I run into addressing issues
and conflicts if I try to add drives beyond the four already
installed?

You should not have any problems adding IDE drives. Modern computers
with ACPI BIOS running Windows 2000 or higher are very good at figuring
out and sharing resources. I have seen systems with 12 IDE drives and
lots of additional hardware without problems. I currently have 5 drives
in one system and 7 in another.

Leonard Severt

Microsoft Enterprise Support