> 2 hard disks ?

[andyvdg]

I'm going to upgrade my 500Mhz Athlon motherboard shortly, and I thought I'd add more storage whilst I've got the box open. Currently I've got two hard disks - can I add a third or am I limited to two, keeping the current smallest drive as a spare in a box in the cupboard ?

I want consistent high performance for all the drives.

Cheers,

Andy.

Editted to add, I'm running XP so no Linux answers please

>>> Edited by andyvdg on Thursday 26th August 09:25

[Liszt]

The answer is yes but as discs are cheap as the old cavaliers, just get a new large capacity one and copy your data onto it and keep the largest of you other drives for backing up data to.

The flog your small drive for peanuts and enjoy a can of your favourite tipple with the proceeds to contemplate a job well done.

[dern]

andyvdg said:

I'm going to upgrade my 500Mhz Athlon motherboard shortly, and I thought I'd add more storage whilst I've got the box open. Currently I've got two hard disks - can I add a third or am I limited to two, keeping the current smallest drive as a spare in a box in the cupboard ? I want consistent high performance for all the drives.

Your pc has (probably) two IDE buses on which two IDE devices can be installed on each bus. So you can have 4 hard drives or 3 hard drives and a cd drive. The hard drive that shares the IDE bus that the cd drive will run slower than if the cd drive was not present. Therefore what I'd do would be to buy a new big capacity disk and use that as your boot disk and use the smallest on the IDE bus with the cd drive and use it to store stuff you don't use often such as downloaded drivers and so on or us it to back up to.

Regards,

Mark

[HarryW]

Any upgrade to the motherboard is now almost certainly going to have a SATA connection or two, these operate at 150M as opposed to the best IDE at 133 (100 standard). Leaving your free IDE for CD/DVD drives and or an old hard drive for backup stuff as well.
If poss get the hard drive that has the biggest cache as well (standard 2Mb but 8Mb is available at not a lot more money).
Well thats what I did and it seems to work very well .

Harry

[ultimasimon]

andyvdg said:

I'm going to upgrade my 500Mhz Athlon motherboard shortly, and I thought I'd add more storage whilst I've got the box open. Currently I've got two hard disks - can I add a third or am I limited to two, keeping the current smallest drive as a spare in a box in the cupboard ? I want consistent high performance for all the drives. Cheers, Andy. Editted to add, I'm running XP so no Linux answers please >>> Edited by andyvdg on Thursday 26th August 09:25

As others have said you will be better off with a couple of SATA drives. If you are serious about hard disk performance then this is the what I would recommend for your operating system drive.

General
Rotational Speed 10,000 RPM (nominal)
Buffer Size 8 MB
Average Latency 2.99 ms (nominal)
Contact Start/Stop Cycles 20,000 minimum

Seek Times (Average)
Read Seek Time (Average) 4.5 ms
Write Seek Time (Average) 5.9 ms (average)
Track-To-Track Seek Time 0.6 ms (average)
Full Stroke Seek 10.2 ms (average)
Transfer Rates
Buffer To Host (Serial ATA) 150 MB/s (Max)
Buffer To Disk 72 MB/s (Sustained)

It is the fastest SATA drive on the market and blows the others out of the water. This is because it was designed to have SCSI performance levels and is ideally suited to a fast gaming machine or server.

They are reasonably priced (at £135 plus the vat) for a drive of this calibre, and you can use a normal SATA drive (200gig 7200rpm, 8meg cache at about £70) for storage. I have built loads of these systems for games machines and they are stonkingly fast

[Podie]

HarryW said:

Any upgrade to the motherboard is now almost certainly going to have a SATA connection or two, these operate at 150M as opposed to the best IDE at 133 (100 standard). Leaving your free IDE for CD/DVD drives and or an old hard drive for backup stuff as well. If poss get the hard drive that has the biggest cache as well (standard 2Mb but 8Mb is available at not a lot more money). Well thats what I did and it seems to work very well . Harry

SATA runs at upto 150… but in truth, it still has to go across the PCI bus, so is slowed to 133… although the next generation of motherboards will be a different matter...

[plotloss]

I notice that IBM/Hitachi have just gone to 100Gb/platter so they are now 400Gb capacity on the 7K400 series.

Going to have to get me a couple of those bad boys I reckon...

[tycho]

My 2 1/2 year old m/b has hardware RAID on it with 2 extra ide channels so I can have up to 8 hdd's. Depends on the m/b really.

[andyvdg]

Ahh OK.

I'll have one or two DVD drives connected to one IDE bus. No point slowing down a HDD by connecting to that.

So I should look for a MB with either extra IDE (more than 2) or a SATA interface ?

Will I run out of interrupts (or is this question not relevant these days) ?

Cheers,

Andy.

[top fuel]

I have a 160Gb external USB 2 drive. It's pretty quick, it hasn't struggled yet, even when my music is on shuffle, all 8900 tracks.

I got an external for the potential portability, if i need a new one I will get an internal though.

I recommend it, plus mine is designed by porsche!

[rsvmilly]

plotloss said:

I notice that IBM/Hitachi have just gone to 100Gb/platter so they are now 400Gb capacity on the 7K400 series. Going to have to get me a couple of those bad boys I reckon...

IBM Deathstars ..... Noooooo!

[rsvmilly]

ultimasimon said:

andyvdg said: I'm going to upgrade my 500Mhz Athlon motherboard shortly, and I thought I'd add more storage whilst I've got the box open. Currently I've got two hard disks - can I add a third or am I limited to two, keeping the current smallest drive as a spare in a box in the cupboard ? I want consistent high performance for all the drives. Cheers, Andy. Editted to add, I'm running XP so no Linux answers please >>> Edited by andyvdg on Thursday 26th August 09:25 As others have said you will be better off with a couple of SATA drives. If you are serious about hard disk performance then this is the what I would recommend for your operating system drive. General Rotational Speed 10,000 RPM (nominal) Buffer Size 8 MB Average Latency 2.99 ms (nominal) Contact Start/Stop Cycles 20,000 minimum Seek Times (Average) Read Seek Time (Average) 4.5 ms Write Seek Time (Average) 5.9 ms (average) Track-To-Track Seek Time 0.6 ms (average) Full Stroke Seek 10.2 ms (average) Transfer Rates Buffer To Host (Serial ATA) 150 MB/s (Max) Buffer To Disk 72 MB/s (Sustained) It is the fastest SATA drive on the market and blows the others out of the water. This is because it was designed to have SCSI performance levels and is ideally suited to a fast gaming machine or server. They are reasonably priced (at £135 plus the vat) for a drive of this calibre, and you can use a normal SATA drive (200gig 7200rpm, 8meg cache at about £70) for storage. I have built loads of these systems for games machines and they are stonkingly fast

I'd Second these Raptors. They are very fast (If a little noisy)

[FlossyThePig]

Some motherboards have two IDE plus SATA connectors. Get the best of both worlds Main drive on SATA and keep both your old disks on IDE. Unless the BIOS won't let you.

Hugh

[HarryW]

FlossyThePig said:

Some motherboards have two IDE plus SATA connectors. Get the best of both worlds Main drive on SATA and keep both your old disks on IDE. Unless the BIOS won't let you. Hugh

been there done that, no problem .

Harry

[Podie]

HarryW said:

FlossyThePig said: Some motherboards have two IDE plus SATA connectors. Get the best of both worlds Main drive on SATA and keep both your old disks on IDE. Unless the BIOS won't let you. Hugh been there done that, no problem . Harry

Ditto