Add Hard Drive To IDE Cable?
 

Hey,

Well my bother has an ASUS A7V8X-X motherboard and he already has two hard drives. Well the problem is there is only one damn ide slot on the mother board so max two ide hard drives.

Well my mother got him another 120gb ide hard drive for Christmas but now he just found out he cant use it since already two on the single ide cable.

So is there anyway to use three? Or did my mom just blow $100. :(

Thanks,
Will

Hey,

From the options you have got left, how about adding a SATA PCI host adapter to your motherboard and also a IDE to SATA converter to your hard disk? ;)

That's what I could think of. There might be other cheaper solutions.

Cheers,
McoreD

PCI IDE card.......2 channels = 4 devices he can add.......price around 25-30 $

HeHe yeah, raid is a little out of his range... ;)

Well never mind, maybe he can. hehe Though he would loose a lot of space. Since atm its a 80gb, 120gb, and an old 60gb.

So this roadworker?

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproduc...124-001&DEPA=0

Or a better one? Got one in mind?

or, get an external HD case, for about 20-30 dollars, and he can plug it into a USB hole, if he has a empty one...

Yeah hes got plenty of Usb 2.0. 8 in total and only using two so.

Have one in mind?

Like:

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProduc...145-747&depa=0

or:

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...146-602&depa=0

Leaning towards this one if I go this route for him. Since easy turn off/on. And FireWire of course.

Well dang. He just told me he only has $18.36. lol

So he cant get either. Have to wait for the first option to drop $1. lol Would help him out but he wants to use his "credit card", gift card really but like a credit car ;), that he got for christmas.

I don't know about those new models,since I own a Promise Ultra 100 TX2 ......a real dinosaur....;)
Promise and HighPoint are 2 well known manufactures in this kind of biznizz...but a bit pricey....

This Syba card's specs seem O.K. though.

here is one in your price range....
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...3525 727&rd=1

"only 1 IDE" :eek:
http://www.asus.com/prog/spec.asp?m=A7V8X-X&langs=01
IDE 2 x UltraDMA/133/100/66
You do know that you can have 2 units on each channel ?
So whats the problem ?

Um it says one is for floopy so figured u cant use it. SO you can?

It even says floopy right on the ide label.

Maybe u misunstood. I am using all three on the mother board. Two are the ide like it says and one is floopy. One ide has two drives on it. And the other has a cdrw and dvd rw. Tried talking him into just using the dvd rw since it burns at 48 but he burns cds like crazy and still wants 52x. lol But still trying to talk him out of but he really just wants a pic card for it.

Well can u even do that. Never tried it and dont want to break anything.

That is a hard drive and a dvd rw dive on one ide. Or do they have to be the same device? Like two hard drives or two cdrws or two whatever. Like i got him setup now.

Hey dont trust ebay and besides its missing the power adapter. lol

1 - Maybe I missunderstod you, due to the lack of a rational explanation in our post ^_^
2 - This motherboard has 1 floppy connector, and 2 IDE connectors.
3 - Floppy is not IDE, the floppy connector can be used for max 2 floppy drives.
4 - Each IDE connector is 1 channel, capable of 2 devices ( Master and Slave ).
5 - You can have a total of 4 IDE devices connected at the same time, directly to this mobo.
6 - You can mix "any" combination of IDE devices on each channel, as long as they have been set up as MAster/Slave or cable select.

Conclusion:
A: your brother can add his new HD directly to his computer, if he removes one of his optical drives.
B: your brother can keep his CDRW and DVDRW, add a PCI IDE controller card and hook his new HD to that one.

A will be for "free", but B will cost him some $, and you some worktime and headache :lol: while helping him.

Yea well hes being a as* atm so screw him. :mad:

Yeah I got u, thats what i thought.

All right so I got him the Silicon Image SiI 680 ATA 133 Controller.

So installed the drivers and the dvd burner is connected. But dvd burnner is not showing up in bios or device driver. Have tried repluging back in, reinstalling drivers, removing primay and secodary ide channels, etc. and nothing works.

Any help with this issue would be great.

Will

Oh and yea the dvd drive does have power as you push the power button and it opens like normal and the led comes on fine.

Have tried different cables too and nothing work.

Update:

Finally got it working. Though cant use dvd bunner with card BC...must be hard drive which thankfully is ok for him.

I have a couple of promise cards here and neither of them like burners being attached, just slap his new drive on there and all will be well :D

I use a highpoint ATA 133 DIsk accelerator. It , like other accelerator cards add hookups for 4 more IDE devices, and works beautifully. It cost about $43 Canadian. Just be careful as this comes in 3 different modwls, but all are good.

Yeap its working great. I like the fact you can do raid with different size hard drives. And appariently as long as you slip up via partitions you can save the remaining gb instead of loosing. Like for example he has a 60gb and 80gb running in raid now. Appears to be working. And then made another partition about 20gb for extra backup space. hehe

Well with my spare 200g, I bought an external case to mount it in. Used the fastest drive on the primary as master and optical as slave.

The external drive gives me lots more options than internal.

Thanks
Dudelive