How Many Hard Drives?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Diaboyos
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Diaboyos

Is there a limit as to how many hard drives a P4PE board will see? I
had to 80GB drives and bought a new 250GB. I had to get a new IDE cable
with 4 outlets because of the limited IDE ports onboard. No matter how many
configurations I try (BIOS and jumper) I can only get two of the drives to
show. Is it not possible to have more than two drives going in on the same
IDE port?
 
Diaboyos said:
Is there a limit as to how many hard drives a P4PE board will see? I
had to 80GB drives and bought a new 250GB. I had to get a new IDE cable
with 4 outlets because of the limited IDE ports onboard. No matter how many
configurations I try (BIOS and jumper) I can only get two of the drives to
show. Is it not possible to have more than two drives going in on the same
IDE port?
Click to expand...

No... you can use one master and one slave driver at each port.

Christian
 
Diaboyos said:
Is there a limit as to how many hard drives a P4PE board will see? I
had to 80GB drives and bought a new 250GB. I had to get a new IDE cable
with 4 outlets because of the limited IDE ports onboard.
Click to expand...

There is no such valid IDE cable. Three connectors max, two drives and the
controller.
No matter how many
configurations I try (BIOS and jumper) I can only get two of the drives to
show. Is it not possible to have more than two drives going in on the same
IDE port?
Click to expand...

Nope. Get a add-on PCI card to add IDE ports.
 
Diaboyos said:
Is there a limit as to how many hard drives a P4PE board will see? I
had to 80GB drives and bought a new 250GB. I had to get a new IDE cable
with 4 outlets because of the limited IDE ports onboard. No matter how many
configurations I try (BIOS and jumper) I can only get two of the drives to
show. Is it not possible to have more than two drives going in on the same
IDE port?
Click to expand...
Hi,
Maser, slave drives. Two, that's it.
Tony
 
There is no such valid IDE cable. Three connectors max, two drives and the
controller.


Nope. Get a add-on PCI card to add IDE ports.
Click to expand...

There are plenty of ways to add ports or drives.

There are PCI plug in cards that handle PATA (ribbon cable) IDE
drives or SATA (serial cable) IDE drives.

http://www.promise.com/product/product_list_eng.asp?familyId=3
http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA/atacard.htm

You can place PATA IDE drives in external enclosures with either or
both USB or Firewire ports. USB can be fanned out with hubs.
Firewire disk drives can be daisy chained to one another, so
one Firewire port on a computer can handle multiple drives.

SCSI is another option, and the three or four address bits on
a SCSI bus allow 7 or 15 devices to be addressed. The
number of devices you can put on one interface is usually
limited by the maximum length of cable supported for the
various SCSI standards. SCSI disk drives are much more
expensive than IDE drives.

It should also be noted that alternatives to the standard
PATA IDE interfaces on the motherboard, are supported via
SCSI emulation drivers. There can be software issues, if
you mix and match plugin PCI cards, in terms of setting
boot order, or getting the firmware on the plugin
card to be properly loaded by the BIOS at POST. Even
searches in Google will not always dig up a solution to
these problems (i.e. using two or more PCI plugin
cards to supports disks).

HTH,
Paul
 
Diaboyos said:
Is there a limit as to how many hard drives a P4PE board will see? I
had to 80GB drives and bought a new 250GB. I had to get a new IDE cable
with 4 outlets because of the limited IDE ports onboard. No matter how many
configurations I try (BIOS and jumper) I can only get two of the drives to
show. Is it not possible to have more than two drives going in on the same
IDE port?
Click to expand...


Thank you all for responding. But I must ask if this is the case
then why do they even sell IDE cables with more than just two outlets???
Does the 2 drive limit stand for CD/DVD drives as well?
 
Hi,
the 2 drive per IDE controller applies to cd/dvd's as well

Can you send a link that shows the cable you bought.

Bill
 
wfs said:
Ok now I get it...

Features

.
Additional connectors give your customers flexibility of where to
position their drives.

.
Allows two internal IDE hard drives to be connected to a controller
card

.
Fully tested and certified to meet or exceed industry standards

.
High quality Internal quad IDE Hard drive ribbon cable

.
Red line on side to indicate pin one.


so it has 4 connectors, but you can only use 2 of them..
Click to expand...


Well that just sux. Wish I knew that before I bought it.
Thanks all for the replies!
 
Diaboyos said:
Thank you all for responding. But I must ask if this is the case
then why do they even sell IDE cables with more than just two outlets???
Does the 2 drive limit stand for CD/DVD drives as well?
Click to expand...

Certain older chipsets, including the Tekram 690CD, use a single set
of I/O ports at 0x1f0 to control up to four drives, instead of the
customary two drives per port.

However, these are definitely NOT common. Are you sure you didn't buy a
SCSI cable? These often have >2 connectors and the early (SCSI-2) cables
have the same 40-wire connectors as IDE cables.

As for your question about CD/DVD - IDE is IDE is IDE. Doesn't matter if
it's a Zip/Jazz Drive, CD/DVD, Hard Drive or MO, most controllers only
support two devices per channel. Each device is allocated Master or Slave
and that's it.

Cheers,

James
 
"Diaboyos" said:
See but even on the above link it states that it connects the
internal IDE controller to three hard drives under the Product Information.
This is a deceptive way to advertise not saying you can only use two at a
time.
Click to expand...

The cable allowed length is 18" and the master disk (device 0) is
supposed to go at the end of the cable, if only one drive is connected
(for an 80 conductor cable). A super long cable, with one drive at
the end, will be non-compliant. Similarly, a long length of spare cable
after the last drive is a bad idea.

http://www.t13.org/ (scroll down to middle of page)
http://www.t13.org/docs2002/d1410r3b.pdf (page 36)

If you look at that (non-final) version of the spec, there is
an allocation for the length of conductors on the motherboard
as well, and if the motherboard copper traces don't use up all
of their allocation, then a longer cable may work. Even with
that idea, you don't want to make your IDE marginal, and end up
with a measurable background error rate on the cable.

And yes, plenty of people do things that exceed the limits
stated in specifications, but if you do, be prepared to deal
with any problems it causes :-)

HTH,
Paul
 
Just keep hooking up your hard drives untill your power supply shits itself
and then you will know how many you can run.
 
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