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More than 2 Hard Drives?

  • 25-08-2003 4:07pm
    #1
    Zascar
    Moderators, Motoring & Transport Moderators, Music Moderators Posts: 12,778 Mod ✭✭✭✭


    Can someone please tell me if it is possible to put another hard drive in my PC (Dell Dimension 4550)? I already have 2 in there, and i opened it up to see if I could spot a space for an another ribbon cable, but there are none free. The only thing I can think of is the cable going to the 3.5" floppy, but is this different or can I use it?

    Thaknks


Comments

  • #2
    Inspector Gadget
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,393 ✭✭✭Inspector Gadget


    Er, if your system comes with two optical drives or removable drives in there already (i.e. CD-ROM/CD-RW/DVD/Orb/ZIP), then your options are:
    1. External USB/Firewire disks
    2. Buy a RAID card and use that to mount additional drives. You don't actually have to use the RAID functionality if you don't want to, and use it as a spare hard disk controller.

    Each (non-serial) IDE controller can support two channels of two devices each, though some RAID cards only support a single channel (i.e. 2 devices). Any more than 4 IDE devices in a system, and you need additional controllers.

    Hope this helps,
    Gadget


  • #3
    Sleipnir
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,514 ✭✭✭Sleipnir


    Dell sometimes only give IDE cables with a connector on each end.
    Standard IDE cables normally have 3 connectors
    1 to connect to the MB, another to connect a master device and the last to connect a slave device.
    You can connect two IDE devices to each of the IDE interfaces (e.g. two hard drives on the Primary IDE, and a CD-ROM & CD-RW on the Secondary IDE. Or in your case, two Hard drives on the Primary and a hard drive and CD-ROM on the Secondary Interface)

    If all 4 are used up, you can buy an IDE card which goes into the PCI slot on your MB and has another IDE Interface. Then you can connect your new HD to that.


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