Hard Drives??

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My computer is running under XP SP2.
- How many hard drives can I actually install in the computer? I currently
have two hard drives 40 GB and 4 GB.
 
Most motherboards have only 2 IDE/SATA connectors and the optical drive (DVD
or CD) is using one of them. You could have 3, plus the optical drive. A
better option is to get an external hard drive that connects via USB to your
PC.

James M. Fisher
MS-MVP Windows Shell/User
www.windowstalk.org
www.computerhaven.info
 
Hi triky,

A normal motherboard will support 4 IDE devices (CD/DVD drives use these as
well), and an add-on pci card could hold 8 more. Some also support multiple
SATA drives, you'd have to check the specifications of the motherboard.
Frankly, you can probably add more drives than you have space for in the
drive bays.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
 
My computer is running under XP SP2.
- How many hard drives can I actually install in the computer? I currently
have two hard drives 40 GB and 4 GB.
Click to expand...

How many controllers do you have? Most desktops have at least 2 IDE
connections. Each of those can support two drives. So most desktops are
ready for at least 4 drives (include any CD, DVD or CD/DVD drives that use
this kind of connection in your count).

If your system has additional controllers on board or a controller card
installed, then more drives can be added. The rating of the power supply
could become a concern when adding a large number of drives.
 
triky said:
My computer is running under XP SP2.
- How many hard drives can I actually install in the computer? I
currently have two hard drives 40 GB and 4 GB.
Click to expand...


How many do you want?

The limit is a hardware one, not an XP one. You need four things to install
an additional internal drive:

.. room in the case to mount it
.. sufficient power
.. sufficent cooling
.. a free controller port to connect it to.

You can change tio a bigger case, you can install a bigger power supply, you
can install additional fans, and you can usually install an additional disk
controller card (EIDE, SATA, or SCSI) if you don't have any free ports.

Given the right hardware, you should be able to have a dozen drives or so.

Most computers come with two EIDE connectors, each supporting two drives for
a total of four. Usually one of those is taken by a CD drive, so you can
easily install three hard drives, if you have enough power and cooling.
Besides the four EIDE ports, I also have four SATA ports so I can install
eight drives.

Then you can add external USB drives.
 
James

"A better option is to get an external hard drive that connects via USB to
your PC."

Why?

TIA

--

Regards.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England

Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
Ken,

You brought back memories of years gone by when I inherited, took over,
bought out.... an Atari 1040ST BBS. It had 5 SCISI hard drives in various
cases each with its own power supply all connected with both ribbon and
round-cable (?). Turning the system on was a scene from Young Doctor
Frankenstein.... turn on the hard drives' power, then the Atari 1040ST...
clackity clack... whir and on comes the black and white monitor. <G>

Still use SCISI drives in my XP computer... so nice to just plug in another
drive if wanted, power supply willing.

Thanks for the memories.
 
Don said:
You brought back memories of years gone by when I inherited, took
over, bought out.... an Atari 1040ST BBS. It had 5 SCISI hard drives
in various cases each with its own power supply all connected with
both ribbon and round-cable (?). Turning the system on was a scene
from Young Doctor Frankenstein.... turn on the hard drives' power,
then the Atari 1040ST... clackity clack... whir and on comes the
black and white monitor. <G>
Still use SCISI drives in my XP computer... so nice to just plug in
another drive if wanted, power supply willing.

Thanks for the memories.
Click to expand...



You're welcome, Don.
 
Thanks for helping.

Tri

Ken Blake said:
How many do you want?

The limit is a hardware one, not an XP one. You need four things to install
an additional internal drive:

.. room in the case to mount it
.. sufficient power
.. sufficent cooling
.. a free controller port to connect it to.

You can change tio a bigger case, you can install a bigger power supply, you
can install additional fans, and you can usually install an additional disk
controller card (EIDE, SATA, or SCSI) if you don't have any free ports.

Given the right hardware, you should be able to have a dozen drives or so.

Most computers come with two EIDE connectors, each supporting two drives for
a total of four. Usually one of those is taken by a CD drive, so you can
easily install three hard drives, if you have enough power and cooling.
Besides the four EIDE ports, I also have four SATA ports so I can install
eight drives.

Then you can add external USB drives.
Click to expand...
 
Thanks,

I followed your recommendation, but I ran into a problem. I did not buy an
external hard drive per se. I bought a Western Digital 250 GB hard drive
plus an external case. I put every thing together and plug it into my USB2
port. Some how I can not format the external one so computer can regconize.
Please help.

Tri
 
triky said:
I followed your recommendation, but I ran into a problem. I did not
buy an external hard drive per se. I bought a Western Digital 250 GB
hard drive plus an external case. I put every thing together and
plug it into my USB2 port. Some how I can not format the external
one so computer can regconize. Please help.
Click to expand...


Please help us to help you. Exactly how did you try to do this--what did you
do? What does "I can not" mean? What happens when you try? If you get an
error message, please quote it verbatim.

For information on how to make a good newsgroup posting, read
http://www.dts-l.org/goodpost.htm
 
When you install the WD hard drive in the external box, you must configure
the jumper on the hard drive to Single drive - not Master, Slave or Cable
Select. Look on top of the drive for the diagram for the jumper settings.

Once you have connected the 80/40 wire ribbon cable (color stripe on one
side of the cable next to the drive's power connector) and the power cable's
4 wire connector, close up the case.

Plug in the power to the enclosure and turn on the drive. You should hear
it spin up. Plug in the USB cable to the enclosure and then into a USB port
on the computer. You will see a "New device found" notice. Wait until you
see "New device is ready to use"

Right click on My computer. Click on Manage and then click on Disk
Management. In the bottom right box you will see all drive type devices
attached to the system. Scroll down until you see your new drive. It
probably will just say Disk X (where X is a number.) It should not say
Healthy at this time but will probably state there is no partition present.
Right click on the Disk and choose properties. Under the General tab you
should see WDC WD250 and a bunch of other information ending with USB
Device. If this doesn't show up, Don't do anything else except cancel as
you have the wrong device selected. Select another until you find your new
drive.

Once you find the correct drive in your disk manager, Right click on it and
Partition it using the full size of the drive. You will then need to format
it. Format it with NTFS only. In Win XP if you try to format as Fat 32 you
will limit the size of the drive to 32 GB.

Let us know if this helps.
 
Sorry about incompleted information in the question because I did not know
for sure what I'm asking. LvTravel gave a detailed information that help me
to understand how to set up an external hard drive.

Again thanks a bunch.

Tri
 
This is the information that I'm looking for. I'm formatting the external
hard drive right now.

Thanks a lot.

Tri
 
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