ide limitations

[youngcoconut]

Is there a limit to how many ide drives can be installed? I have a master and slave ide drive on the system, can I add a controller card and add more drives as is possible with scsi?
Thanks,
YC

 

[4Ryan6]

Yes

<b><font color=purple>Details, Details, Its all in the Details, If you need help, Don't leave out the Details.</font color=purple></b>

 

[pIII_Man]

the max total drives you can have in windows is 26 drives... 2 are reserved for floppy...

3 386DX-25's...12 volts...glue some ln2 and a wicked amount of overclocking and you get a willamantee minus 36 pins, 33.75 million transistors and a couple hundred mhz...

 

[youngcoconut]

The Details:
Its an Aopen motherboard AX45 4D-Max which support ATA 133 with a P4 2.66 GHZ processor and 1 GB ram. OS is Wink 2K. The boot disk is an ide seagate 80 GB. Currently it is the only drive in the system but I plan to add a slave drive on the ide motherboard controller. I would like to add an IDE PCI controller card and add more drives but I am not sure how to configure this. Should the drives on the PCI controller card be both slaves or should one be a master? Can they both be slaves? If they are configured to be master and slave will the new master conflict with the master boot disk on the motherboard ide controller?
Thanks for your help, my previous systems have all been SCSI so I haven't worked with IDE at all.
YC

 

[4Ryan6]

What exactly are you after, you putting together a major server or something like that? Anyhow you're really only limited by the amount of money you want to invest, and how many PCI slots your M/B has.

<A HREF="http://www.xpcgear.com/hiro131atide.html" target="_new">http://www.xpcgear.com/hiro131atide.html</A>
You can add two additional hardrives with this card

<A HREF="http://www.xpcgear.com/hiro1332atra.html" target="_new">http://www.xpcgear.com/hiro1332atra.html</A>
Four additional drives with this one

<A HREF="http://www.xpcgear.com/hiro4044atra.html" target="_new">http://www.xpcgear.com/hiro4044atra.html</A>
Eight additional drives with this one


Each IDE branch would be configured Master/Slave, and which drive you decide to boot from is up to you, you'll definitely need to research into this subject in depth, to have all your questions answered before jumping into it. The links I posted are high performance RAID cards, you don't have to get them from this site, but it gave a good breakdown of their capabilities.

<b><font color=purple>Details, Details, Its all in the Details, If you need help, Don't leave out the Details.</font color=purple></b>

 

[Flinx]

You can also slap in SCSI cards and chain more drives (external since your filling up with IDE otherwise).

You can even add drives to the USB and firewire ports.

The loving are the daring!

 

[4Ryan6]

Yes really his options are only limited by the amount of money he's planning to put into it.

<b><font color=purple>Details, Details, Its all in the Details, If you need help, Don't leave out the Details.</font color=purple></b>

 

[Flinx]

Going to need one hell of a PSU though

The loving are the daring!

 

[4Ryan6]

You Got That Right!

<b><font color=purple>Details, Details, Its all in the Details, If you need help, Don't leave out the Details.</font color=purple></b>

 

[Flinx]

If you have IDE devices attached to the secondary IDE channel (even a CD-ROM) you will notice that it is qualified as the <b>secondary master or slave</b>.

I.E. you won't have problems with the other drives.

The loving are the daring!<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Flinx on 08/03/03 05:01 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[youngcoconut]

4Ryan6, Flinx, PIII Man

What I am getting after is an inexpensive method to store and access data for projects that last about 1-4 months. I work with digitized film doing computer graphics. When we scan or digitize the film at 2K resolution each frame is about 13 MB and footage runs at 24 frames per second.

I usually need about 750 GB to 1 TB of data online. A few years ago I was using all scsi drives which cost a fortune and had to be leased. Now the prices have come down considerably with IDE.

I have found that IDE is per megabyte cheaper than SCSI though it appears not to be as stable.

Thank you for answering my basic question which was on the additonal chains the drives will be configured as master and slave and I can choose what disk to boot from.

If I understand it correctly, looking at the controller cards, it seems that IDE is limited to 2 per chain so controller cards have multiple channels that feed different chains to add drives.

Currently I have ide drives connected to the system via a firewire enclosure. It is a fire express from compucable.

http://www.compucable.com/firewire/embed.asp?stuff=se_fx_usb2_body.html#fxu2eb525

Once the drive is full I would like to put it on an internal controller to free up the enclosure for transfers of data with other IDE drives. I am considering a removable dock array but I hate to invest in hardware that I know will probably age quickly as drives increase in storage capacity and transfer speeds. Controller cards seem cheaper and will do the same thing but may not be as user friendly.

Back to the enclosure though,
I am not sure that the enclosure is cooling the drives sufficiently. They are WD 200 GB 7200 rpm 8MB Cache. The manufacturer maximum operating temperature limit is listed at 55 degrees Celcius. What is a cost effective way to measure the surface temp. I would like to see if the case is cooling the drive enough. If it is not I guess my options are trying a different enclosure or adding another fan.

Thanks,
YC

 

[Flinx]

Your system is going to need substantial cooling.
Invest in numerous case fans and of course a good case.
There are fans/systems for cooling <b>internal</b> disk drives as well.

As for you external firewire enclosures, I have no experience and will not advise.
Toms had an article reviewing another vendor though:
<A HREF="http:// www.tomshardware.com/storage/20030116 " target="_new">http:// www.tomshardware.com/storage/20030116 </A>
These people make firewire enclosures as well. You're on your own to evaluate these though.

The loving are the daring!<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Flinx on 08/03/03 08:13 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[4Ryan6]

I also don't have the experience to advise you on the external firewire enclosures, it seems like an excellent idea, and probably the way to go, but you'll have to make the call on this one, sorry I wasn't more help to you.

<b><font color=purple>Details, Details, Its all in the Details, If you need help, Don't leave out the Details.</font color=purple></b>

 

[Crashman]

I've seen drive controllers with up to 8 IDE connections, that would allow for 16 IDE drives, but you'd probably need a double width tower (the server cabinets with one side dedicated to power supplies and drives) to mount that many drives with an adequate amount of cooling.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>