Maximum Number Of Internal Hard Drives
 

I'm proposing to upgrade my Desktop PC by putting in extra hard drives.The new motherboard, the Asus P4C800-E deluxe, will support quite a few and I'm thinking 2 serial ATA and 2 ordinary ATA drives.

The problem I have is in deciding whether I can physically put 4 drives into my desktop, bearing in mind that you have to find suitable anchoring points and the only space I have available is behind the internal speaker in the left front corner of my PC.

Has anyone managed to successfully fit and operate 4 hard drives in their desktop please?

Any help greatly appreciated. ;)

Re: Maximum Number Of Internal Hard Drives
 

got a pic of the inside of your case? would help:)

but there is always room for drives .resting on the bottom, where the floppy lives, sitting in the cd rom bays hanging from the roof on wire and covered using bubble rap

do u need 4 drives? get 2 huge ones or even one small one to boot from and one huge one to do with what ya like.

how about an external usb/firewire drive ..all sorts u can do and im sure they will fit just nudge em in ..

what other stuff do u have in the pc in the way of dvd's etc

Re: Maximum Number Of Internal Hard Drives
 

I have my drives in caddies which fit in the 5 1/4" bays. Makes swapping and working on them easier. Perhaps you could put 2 drives internally, and 2 in caddies?

I'm running 3 drives at the moment. A tip.....make sure your PSU is big enough.

Re: Maximum Number Of Internal Hard Drives
 

You can get if needed too a pci card that give you an extra 4 IDE slots. I think there overpriced myself though

Re: Maximum Number Of Internal Hard Drives
 

the amount of drives isnt a problem i dont think its more an issue of where to put them.

Re: Maximum Number Of Internal Hard Drives
 

If you stack them on the base of the unit use blu-tac between them as shock absorbers and cable tie them to the case to stop them moving.

I would personaly go with getting 2 very big drives rather than 4 smaller ones

Re: Maximum Number Of Internal Hard Drives
 

I had 6 in mine at one point, but I had 2 removable HDD caddie things that had space for 3 in each. 2 drives on the primary IDE channel and 2 on each Raid/Ata channel.

Re: Maximum Number Of Internal Hard Drives
 

I have 5 sometimes & can have 11 if I want & I'm on an old PC.

I can do this by using a SCSI card that will allow me to have upto 7 SCSI HDD's (albiet a bit more expensive than IDE).

Its a playoff on what you want, on the EIDE cables you can usually only have a maximum of 4 drives.

As suggested, pehaps having bigger drives is the way to go, you can always partition them into more smaller drives if you wish.

Re: Maximum Number Of Internal Hard Drives
 

Sorry,I don't have a picture of the inside of the PC. The case is 17 inches wide by 6 inches high by 16.25 inches deep. It was built circa 1997.

The back left corner is occupied by the existing QDI Brilliant motherboard with 4 PCI slots,3 isa slots and 3 memory slots which I intend to replace.

The right back corner is occupied by the power supply.

The front right corner is taken up by 3, 5.25" bays.The top one contains my CD-ROM drive.The second bay contains a hard drive cooler behind which is a hard drive caddied with the CD-ROM above.The third and bottom drive is blocked off and apparently unused, though I do intend to put an Audigy Platinum unit in there.

In the front middle I have a 3.5" floppy drive, a 3.5" Iomega 100MB zip drive and a second hard drive ( not visible) all caddied together. The only available space is the front left corner space just in front of the motherboard, but I'm concerned at the moment as to how I might safely attach them, particularly if I have to move the PC for some reason.

I'm essentially trying to maximise usage of the facilities on the motherboard and get myself a system that is super-fast and has high storage and expandibility potential.

It may well be that I will have to content myself with two large serial ATA drives preferably in a RAID configuration.

But it will be interesting to hear what others think. And thank you to all those who have commented while I was writing this epistle. ;)

Re: Maximum Number Of Internal Hard Drives
 

well - as you know a bit about pc's etc and your putting in a new mobo anyway why not get ur self a new Case plenty out there that can take 3+cd/dvd roms and a load of hjard drives.

its what id do if i was u far easier that farting around with what u have now and as u said u want it for expanibility, ur stuck now so think how u will be in the future..
have a look at
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatal...Cases_128.html

btw: as ur upgraidng from an old mobo that had isa slots - do u have a new PSU? if ur getting an AMD or Intel (sorry didnt look to see what cpu ur mobo takes) and a load of drives u will need a more powerful PSU maybe than ur current one ..

Re: Maximum Number Of Internal Hard Drives
 

I currently have a true Intel Pentium III 450Mhz processor as that was the maximum the motherboard would take.

I have toyed with the idea of getting a tower, which would allow me to do that as there is only limited space in the room where my PC is located.

The problem for me is that if I wanted to sell off this system to get cash to buy parts for a full new computer with a tower, I would have to reinstall Windows 95 which would render some of my PCI cards inoperative because they wouldn't run without Windows 98 drivers. In 2000, I had my PC upgraded in a shop..now closed down..and to get some of the upgrades to work they had to install Windows 98 and also installed a spare copy of Windows 98 setup files on my D drive. I can't sell my existing machine without looking like a software pirate or restoring it back to the original Windows 95 setup for which I have genuine setup CDs purchased with the computer.

My options are to upgrade the existing computer or give it away and buy or build a new one.

As I have limited experience of tinkering around inside my PC I was planning to do it gradually a bit at a time. Just needed to know if what I was doing was physically and technically possible.

Re: Maximum Number Of Internal Hard Drives
 

its a complicated world :) good luck.

Re: Maximum Number Of Internal Hard Drives
 

Most current standard (mid) towers these days have 2 3.5 in visible, 3 5in visible and then below that space for 1 horizontal and 3 vertical drives.

My current PC and my old vintage 98 gateway would both happily take 4 HDDs in proper 3.5in HDD locations.

Bluetak is that a good way of keeping them in place. I bought an OEM second HDD for the gateway currently it is slid in place with no screws holding it in. Must get round to buying some - perhaps blutac would be a good interim solution.

Re: Maximum Number Of Internal Hard Drives
 

IMO, your only option is to give it away or bin it, and build or buy a new one. Upgrading wouldn't be worth it. PC's are dirt cheap these days.

If you are considering a new one, why don't you tell us what budget you have in mind and what you'll mainly be using it for, and maybe we can help. There are plenty of knowledgable peeps here that could either price up parts for a build-your-own or point you in the direction of some good deals on pre-built machines.

Re: Maximum Number Of Internal Hard Drives
 

It is quite often found in the 'tool box' of time hardened network engineers, because it is - high tack - impact/vibration cusioning - general purpose - non conducting medium ( think I got everything there :pp )

Re: Maximum Number Of Internal Hard Drives
 

My budget would be about £1500-£1600 but I need to get Windows XP Pro included. I was really hoping to keep costs down by upgrading or at least get something for my existing PC so that I could get more of the things I want:-

an Intel 3GHz processor with 800 fsb and hyperthreading
a P4C800-E deluxe motherboard
an ATI 9800 Pro graphics card or All In Wonder card
1GB Dual Channel DDR400 Memory
an internal DVD multi-burner
an Audigy 2 Platinum sound card/front panel
2 80GB serial ATA hard drives in a RAID configuration

I'd also like to get Microsoft Office Professional if possible.

Maybe I should go for a £3000 bank loan and use my existing £1500 to pay it off!! ;)

Re: Maximum Number Of Internal Hard Drives
 

Okay, using Planet Prices as a guide, this is what I came up with:

P4 3GHz £157.81
P4C800-E Deluxe £128.90
9800Pro (ATi branded) £135.07
2x 512MB XMS3200 Corsair RAM £204.64
Pioneer DVR-A07 DVD +R/RW -R/RW £95.59
2x Samsung 80GB (8MB Cache) SATA Drives £109.28
XP Pro OEM £98

I looked for the Audigy 2 Platinum but only found one listed and the site said "No Longer Available" for some reason. Are they discontinued?

Anyways, that comes to £929.29 without shipping, but still gives you plenty to spend on the sound-card, case and PSU. The cheapest I've seen Office XP was £209, but that requires buying a selected piece of hardware (CPU, HDD or Mobo).

You could go cheaper on some of the parts I listed of course - I'm just brainstorming - so I don't see why you can't get what you want within your budget, or at most just over it.

Re: Maximum Number Of Internal Hard Drives
 

Thanks for that, Semi On. That looks encouraging. I can limit shipping by just using one or two suppliers.I can have a good look round and get Microsoft Office Pro from the cheapest source.As for the Audigy it may be discontinued as new models are coming out all the time but as I found recently when buying a discontinued camcorder,someone,somewhere will have it.

Re: Maximum Number Of Internal Hard Drives
 

After looking at the list of hard drives and other components to go with the system I hope to build I started checking on memory because the P4C800-E Deluxe has to have specific memory.

The board supports 4GB and there are 4 memory slots in 2 pairs so ideally I thought that a 1GB memory card in each slot in two matched pairs should allow me to maximise memory usage in time, but I don't seem to be able to find 1GB memory cards.

The ads say 1024MB (2 X 512 MMB).Do this mean 1 double-sided memory card with 512MB on each side or does it mean 2 separate memory cards with 512MB on each please? If the latter, how do you get a 4GB system? Also which is the fastest, most stable type of memory to use?

Re: Maximum Number Of Internal Hard Drives
 

While I think about it - is there any reason why it has to be a P4? I am just thinking out loud...and if your upgrade cycle is a fairly long time (and considering the system you're coming from that's not a wild assumption), have you thought about going the Athlon 64 route?

It would make sense in terms of future-proofing. Intel are going the 64-bit route, but exactly when is anyone's guess, so...

Just some food for thought.

Re: Maximum Number Of Internal Hard Drives
 

I've always used Intel because they are more powerful but expensive chips, while AMD are not as powerful but a lot cheaper.

At the moment AMD have the Athlon 64 and a 400MHz fsb. Intel with just a 32 bit P4 and an 800 fsb are managing to stay ahead.When Intel do go the 64 bit route,I think their advantage will be magnified,but as you say we don't know when that will be.

I wondered if Intel were waiting for the PCI Express motherboards to arrive before they did anything. New PC systems will be a heck of a lot quicker as PCI Express will really speed up the system bus and all electronic traffic within your computer.

But as you say considering Athlon is an option particularly if the costs get too high.