PC hardware forum: How many drives can the motherboard support?

You will go nuts trying to sort out how to host the CD recording software that came with your CDRW as well as the CD/DVD recording software that comes with your DVDRW (which will record CDR/W).

SAVE YOURSELF ALL THE AGONY AND LOST MONTHS OF TIME. Pull the CDRW and install the DVDRW and use it.

Bob

Mate,
I think what it comes down to is what is the reason for having a CD burner as well as a DVD burner. Give the CD Burner to a friend who doesn't have one, or maybe give it to a charity. Save it and start collecting parts for a new computer, um, what else can i say to do with it, at the end of the day, forget about it, it is possible i think, but there is no reason for it, and it will just become a pain in the ass with all the software. I use to run a CD Burner and a DVD burner, these days i just run a single DVD Burner, may take a bit longer, but i have the time.

I've seen such disasters and people rarely up the power supply and end up in pain.

Go external USB 2.0 if you need this.

Bob

The owner rarely understands the power demands. So we just fit the external case.

Bob

Most boards will support at least 2 IDE drives and 2 SATA
drives and will also support the cd burner and dvd burner. You can also buy excellent DVD/CD combo drives which will do both.

You haven't said which MB, it depends on the MB. There are some MBs that have 2 ATA channels, 2 ATA raid channels and 4 SATA ports. And you can get addon ATA and SATA cards. Now if go with SCSI you can have up to 15 drives and you need a 650 watt PSU to handel all of this. John

This depends on your particular motherboard. Two of my PIII boards support 8 IDE devices, and both of them are full to the max. My 2 P4 systems support 8 devices as well.

For you to get an answer to your question, you need to tell us exactly what motherboard you have. Some support 8 devices, and some only support 4 unless you install an additional card.

Other posts in this thread are also correct. You do need to look at your power supply and the demands that you are putting on it with all of those devices. The power supply that most systems come with just won't handle the load when you start adding devices.

Sure, you can add those 2 without removing anything, but you will have to buy an additional IDE Controller card. You will also have to buy a bigger power supply. Get at least a 500w ATX power supply, since those are quite inexpensive if you play your cards right. Do note that OEM cases (for example SONY, COMPAQ, etc.) may have specially designed power supplies that will not fit elsewhere. It is possible to have up to 24 disk and disc drives, plus two floppies, when using DOS and Windows 9X/ME. With Windows 2000 and XP, you can support more than that by mounting the drives in "NTFS Folers" which would be like C:\My other hard drive\ instead of Q:\ etc. The logistics of doing something like that would mean either one reallly powerful power supply (we're talking in the kilowatts) or a multitude of power supplies, maybe even external USB2 or FireWire drives, and a HUGE case or a lot of shelf space for your external drives. Why anyone would want terabytes of hard drive space is beyond me, unless you are too cheap to buy a Beowulf cluster server!

I had the same problem & solved it by getting an external HD. The external is USB (1.1 or 2.0) or FIREWIRE. It is NOT slow - as a matter of fact, it is as fast if not faster than one of the internal drives. I have had no experience with external burners, but people who have external DVD players say that the speed is fine. I vote for the external drive. It may be slightly slower than an internal burner, but usually you don't burn a copy of a file but once, so the additional time shouldn't matter (if there IS any time difference).

First, If you're talking about a dvd burner, ask yourself why add it instead of just replacing your old cdrom drive (if you have one), that way you'll have a CDrw and a DVDrw.
As for the hard drive, the post "Drive Hoarding" by "Impreza WRX" is the best: You can always buy a PCI IDE controller card which will enable you to add IDE controllers (some of which have RAID capabilities but will have problems controlling CDs, in which case you can leave you CD Drives on the Motherboard controllers).
Be aware, however, that at least a 350W power Supply is required depending on how many power-hungry pieces of hardware you're using.
Note that today's average 80GB IDE hard drive uses a maximum of 17.0 W (for spinup) and average 8 to 14 w (for read/write/idle and seek)

I am currently running 3 harddrives a dvd rom, cd rom, dvd burner, a cd burner, an old 120 tape drive, 5 1/4 floppy, and my 3 1/2 floppy off my compaq amd 2600+ using win2000

I had to make an extention for the ide ribbons to allow for the additional drives and add a new power supply. The supplys are two 450 watters and yes my computer is the fuglist thing you'll ever see but I did it to prove a piont that even a mini tower can play the big tower games

Lee Miller, doclnemo@yahoo.com

Hi

If you get a rack mount and a server type motherboard, you can have as many as you want. This is because in the rack mount we have all of this fantastic space and air flow, why one could even heat their home with the heat given off. Like the others do not use a CD burner and a DVD burner separate. All DVD's since the beginning were/are planned to play and record both CD's and DVD's, but unlike most here I prefer to use a CD/DVD ROM to play CD's/DVD's and save the burner for recording. This is because the burner needs to have tighter tolerances, so the more it used for non-recording purposes, the more it wears out. To be non-glib about the number drives, how many open PCI slots do you have open/not filled? IDE controller cards can be bought to fill up those empty slots, each controller usually controls four IDE/ATAPI devices. That is how servers are made and using motherboards that are specific to being servers. To answer your question, number slots, number of IDE controller boards.

Hope this helps.

Rick

http://www.rickswebfactory.com/

I have an Asus A7V133 mobo with raid. I dont run raid but have utilised the extra IDE's to run DVD rom,CDRW,1x80G HD and 2x 40G HD's. All work fine no need for exst.cards etc but I dont think I can fit anymore in?

Technically, the issue of compatibility is a function of several major compatibility factors:
1. Communication Interface
2. Driver (OS-dependant)
3. Software (OS-dependant)

Common communication interfaces, which can be one of the following:
1. IDE/EIDE interface
2. SCSI Interfaces (50/68/80 pins; internal/external)
3. USB/Firewire (typically used for external devices)
4. SATA

Most home users' PCs uses IDE/EIDE interface and newer motherboards also support SATA onboard. Unless you specifically buy SCSI-supported MB or add-on SCSI card/RAID card, this is most likely not applicable to your case. Therefore, based on the intent of your question, the answer is yes from the interface connectivity perspective. That's, you can take any IDE/EIDE device and plug it in another host which also support the IDE/EIDE interface. Just make sure that you check the Master/Slave jumper and jump the drive accordingly.

Beyond the physical interface, you must consider driver and software compatibilities.

Basically, you must have the driver for each hardware device so that it can communicate with the OS. Unless your DVD Burner is rather old, which does not seem to be the case here, Win XP will likely have the driver for it. You could also check with Sony to see if your DVD Burner is supported in Win XP. Your DVD Burner software should works if the hardware is supported by Win XP.

Caution:

You may need to remove the driver and software installed to support the old hardware/CDRW drive before installing the DVD Burner. In some cases, you may have driver conflict which may prevent loading the driver for the newly installed hardware (DVD burner in your case). Also, in rare instances, the old software can also cause conflict. Just be aware of this possibility and take appropriate action.

Most motherboards come with 2 connectors for hard drives, CD-ROMs and DVDs which are referred to as devices. Each connector will support 2 devices. There is a Primary and a Secondary connector on the motherboard. The ribbon that connects to the motherboard has 2 connectors on it for devices. One is called the Master and the 2nd is called the Slave. The jumper settings on the devices determines which device is the Master and which one in the Slave With this setup the motherboard can handle 4 devices. It is possible to add a controller card that will have 2 connectors on it, to your motherboard that will give you the ability to add another 4 devices. That is if you have an open slot. Which will give you a total of 8 devices. It is possible to do what you want to do, but there is the issues of will your power supply be able to handle the other devices?