How to connect more than 4 IDE device?

[Camino]

The purpose is, to install more than the normally amount of harddrives/CD-ROM into my system, can this be done?

I hear that some people are talking about a RAID-controller, but I though that this kind of hardware is only used for the reason of dataprotection/backup. Or am i so wrong.

So if there's a specialist among us, then let them speak now please!

TIA Camino

[Crowdirt]

Well....one way to do this is use the GigaByte MOBO that has a built in Raid Controller....Another thing that you can do is add a Promise ATA-100 Controller to your machine....

[Big POPPA Pump]

I have 8 IDE devices set up on my system, 4 HDD and 4 CD-Rom devices. Its a non raid system and since I work with a lot of digital and visual media, I need all the hard disk space I can get. Anyways I have all my HDD's set up on a promise TX2 controller and the CD-Rom devices on the Mobo's Primary and Secondary IDE channels.
The TX2 controller card is not that expensive and you can easily get one from any retail store for $39.99 or maybe for less if you order it online.
And again RAID is used not only for data protection/backup but also if you are doing lot of writes to your hard disk. The more hard disks you put in your RAID configuration (striping) the faster the writes.

Hope this helps!!

[Camino]

Thx for your reply's guys. After reading this nfo, it's much cleary to me what I must do now.

I did have a look on the site of Promise... and I must say, there's a variety of solutions regarding controllers.

Cya..

[adams]

any of ya have a web site with promise cards, i'm looking into buying one myself.