Limit to number of IDE devices on XP?

  • Thread starter Thread starter JK
  • Start date Start date
Nothing wrong with that config.
Click to expand...

Yes. Optical drives usually don't go fast and may bring down HD's
speed. So even if you have ATA6 drive, it would only run at ATA2
speed because of the optical drive being on the same cable.
Why do you want to have 4 HDs at all ?
Click to expand...

Same reason I have 5 hard drives at once. No one sells a 1TB+ hard
drive yet.
 
Impmon said:
Nope.

Optical drives usually don't go fast
Yes.

and may bring down HD's speed.
Nope.

So even if you have ATA6 drive, it would only run at ATA2
speed because of the optical drive being on the same cable.
Click to expand...

Wrong. Aint been like that for many years now.
Same reason I have 5 hard drives at once.
Nope.

No one sells a 1TB+ hard drive yet.
Click to expand...

That isnt the reason in his case.

And there are 500G drives around now anyway.
 
Impmon said:
Yes. Optical drives usually don't go fast and may bring down HD's
speed. So even if you have ATA6 drive, it would only run at ATA2
speed because of the optical drive being on the same cable.
Click to expand...


Utter nonsense. Each drive runs at its own speed.
 
And there are 500G drives around now anyway.
Click to expand...

200 GB was the biggest back when I got mine. Since they all work fine
for now I see no need to replace all HD's with just 2 500GB.
 
Impmon said:
Nope.

Optical drives usually don't go fast and may bring down HD's
speed. So even if you have ATA6 drive, it would only run at ATA2
speed because of the optical drive being on the same cable.
Click to expand...

Nonsense. Utterly clueless.
 
He's having a problem running 4 right now.
Click to expand...

I know and it's because most IDE card don't like anything other than
plain hard drives. The solution is to leave the optical drives on the
mobo's IDE ports and hard drive on the PCI IDE card.
 
I know and it's because most IDE card don't like anything other
than plain hard drives. The solution is to leave the optical drives
on the mobo's IDE ports and hard drive on the PCI IDE card.
Click to expand...

Thats not ideal either and he already said that
he doesnt want the boot drive on the IDE card.

Given that, it makes more sense to have the boot drive on the motherboard
IDE ports and have one of the optical drives on that cable too.
 
Thanks again for all the responses to my original post. Much appreciated.

I have been trying some of your suggestions. The PCI card certainly seems
happier with HDs than optical drives (the system certainly boots faster).

But I still can't attach a 7th device. I ended up with:

1st motherboard channel: two HD
2nd motherboard channel: two optical drives
1st PCI card channel: two HD

But when I try to add a single optical drive to the 2nd PCI channel, no go.

(As before, the PCI card sees the device (i.e. it appears on the device
list on the PCI IDE card bios boot screen, along with the two HD), but then
the boot process again stalls at the XP progress bar).

I've tried different cables. The one thing I haven't tried is loading a
third HD on to the PCI card, but it wouldn't make for any sensible
combination of devices even if it worked (i.e. I'd end up with a HD and
optical device sharing a channel on the motherboard, given that I don't
want to be booting the system from the PCI card).

I think it's time to gracefully concede defeat.

JohnK
Click to expand...


Could it be a Power Thing as HD do need lots of AMPS when starting up.

I have had a total of 8 Devices on my system with 4 HD 420w PSU.

Also how many Partitions are on these drives..?


On my System I have run out of Drive letters.
 
I'm pleased I started this thread if only because I found out that HDs and
optical drives can share an IDE channel without speed issues. It seems that
my "knowledge" on this issue, if it had ever been true, is well out of
date.

If I summon the energy, I may even try a final disc swap at the weekend,
and stick the third optical drive on the same motherboard channel as my
boot drive...

Thanks again for all the advice.


JohnK
 
JK said:
I'm pleased I started this thread if only because I found out that HDs
and optical drives can share an IDE channel without speed issues.
Click to expand...

There *are* speed issues *when* the HD and optical drive actually do
*'share'* an IDE channel (i.e. data transfers going on on both devices).
But that's the same for 2 harddrives sharing a bus.
With a slow device like an optical the effect is just more noticeable.
It seems that my "knowledge" on this issue, if it had ever been true, is
well out of date.
Click to expand...

Say a decade out of date.
 
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