Which MB support >4 IDE Drives

[Palinkas]

Which P4 Motherboard supports more than 4 IDE Drives? I want to use a DVD, CD R/W, and multiple Hard Drives.

 

[elzt]

Any mobo with onboard ATA/RAID controller will do. In this case, up to 8 IDE drives can be used. Furthermore, you can get a PCI IDE card to connect even more drives.

 

[Palinkas]

Could I still hook up multiple drive without using the RAID configuration?

 

[Crashman]

Many RAID boards use a RAID BIOS that will recognise hard drives but not CD devices. They still allow you to use the drives non-RAIDED, so you can put all your hard drives on the RAID controller without using RAID, set the main BIOS to boot off that controller first, and put all your other drives on the standard controller.

<font color=blue>You're posting in a forum with class. It may be third class, but it's still class!</font color=blue>

 

[Palinkas]

I am looking at the following:

ASUS P4B533-E
ASUS P4PE
ASUS P4S8X

Two of the drives will be DVD and CD R/W.

What would you recommend?

 

[Crashman]

Of course the P4PE is the best of those, the P4S8X seems to be problematic.

<font color=blue>You're posting in a forum with class. It may be third class, but it's still class!</font color=blue>

 

[paulj]

If you only have 4 devices and don't won't to use RAID wouldn't it be easier and cheaper to use the two IDE connectors?

<font color=red>The solution may be obvious, but I can't see it for the smoke coming off my processor.</font color=red>

 

[Crashman]

I see that you saw the number "4". what you didn't see is the "more than" that preceeded it in his question! So he's looking at boards that have an onboard second controller, but these have been RAID controllers for a while, so he wanted to make certain he didn't have to RAID his drives to use them.

<font color=blue>You're posting in a forum with class. It may be third class, but it's still class!</font color=blue>

 

[paulj]

Your right. My bad.

<font color=red>The solution may be obvious, but I can't see it for the smoke coming off my processor.</font color=red>