How to connect 3 IDE drives?

[rschissler]

How do I add a third IDE hard drive to my system? Do I need a cable with three connectors? What do I set the hard drive jumper to?

My secondary cable has both a CD and DVD connected to it, so that's not available either.

[Lord Nassirbannipal]

You need a PCI to IDE card.

[Lost4Cause]

Well,. not to many options exist. RAID or IDE controller cards on the PCI bus are the only 2 I know of off the top of my skull. I know from past experience you can't just add a third hard drive to a normal ide channel thru a 3 connector cable. Most mobo's only recognize the first 2 drives per IDE channel even using cable select.

[Stanley Pain]

Get rid of one of the ROM drives, or you'll need to get a PCI IDE controller card.

[job]

Can't you connect an external enclosure via USB?

[rschissler]

It would only be a temporary situation (I need to copy the contents of the second drive to a third drive), so I could disconnect the DVD drive and place it there. But what about the cable? The hard drive cable is a 80-ribbon while the CD is a 40-ribbon. Would it still work, just slower?

[mikeblas]

Would it still work, just slower?

Yep, it should just work and be slower.

Some of the newer BIOSes I've used will notice that the device is capable of being faster, except for your suboptimal cable, and give you a warning about it.

[Ice Czar]

CRC errors might eventally kick you down out of UDMA all together and into PIO mode however
there is slower and then there is glacially slow


borrow an 80 wire cable

UDMA
mode5...........100MB/s
mode4............66.7MB/s
mode3............44.4MB/s
mode2............33.3MB/s (typical optical)
mode1............25.0MB/s
mode0............16.7MB/s
PIO
mode4............16.7MB/s
mode3............11.1MB/s
mode2............8.3MB/s
mode1............5.2MB/s
mode0............3.3MB/s



just a quick cut and paste
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=754424 > http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=741512

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Optimizing Physical Configuration
being on the same channel there are a few considerations

IDE\ATA\ATAPI is sequential
meaning first the HDD reads a part of the file until the HDD's Cache is full then writes it to the Second HDD,
then that repeats each taking its own turn
then its unlikely its reading the file from a single location, its probably fragmented, and when it writing it, its also writing it to multiple locations, that introduces the latency and access times of both drives into it

if your going to be transfering alot of data inbetween two HDDs on a regular basis, its best if they are on their own channels, writing from a HDD to a Optical drive is alot better, the optical can only deal with a maximum of 33MB/s Burst (UDMA mode2) whereas the HDD is probably at UDMA mode5 100MB/s burst (50>30MB/s Sustained), in short the sequential issues arent enought to effect the burn speed with modern software (and reads arent really an issue either) both cant saturate the bus

of course those are just interface speeds and are not the sole consideration of HDD performance > As the Disc Spins (http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=699246) @ Lost Circuits

there is a myth about putting optical drives on the same channel as HDDs, it is just that a myth, but it keeps getting reinforced by the way Windows deals with ATA\ATAPI issues
basically with Independent Device Timing (http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ref/hdd/if/ide/confTiming.html) two devices (master\slave) both transfer their data at their own highest speed, but, they both either have to be PIO (which is glacially slow) or UDMA, if one defaults to PIO because of some issue, Windows will default the other as well. There was a time when CDROMs where only PIO, and HDDs where DMA, for that period of history you didnt want to share a channel, but modern opticals are UDMA mode2 so there is rarely any issue

some of the reasons a device might default to PIO
DMA Mode for ATA/ATAPI Devices in Windows XP (http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/hwdev/tech/storage/ide-dma.mspx)
IDE ATA and ATAPI Disks Use PIO Mode After Multiple Time-Out or CRC Errors Occur (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;817472)

however if possible it is ideal
(for data integrity if nothing else)
to have each device as a master on its own channel

whenever possible consider from what source to what target the large files are being transfer on a regular basis,
and try to adapt your physical configuration to accommodate that ;)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

all that much worse when copying from one location to another on a single drive
fragmentation, caches, seek, latency and arm repositioning all come into play
the workload cant be split between two drives, or across two channels
the fragmentation level of the source and the ability to write the file in contigious space on the target partition makes a big difference all else being equal however

[Malogato]

IDE is limited to two devices maximum, per controller. Hence the term, master and slave or "Primary and secondary" there is no 'tertiary' drive system for IDE, so you will never find a 3 (4) head IDE cable.

Your options, as spelled out here are

1) Buy a PCI, IDE controller card. KuoTech cards do the job from newegg.com . Promise is the leader in this market, however.

2) Ditch one of your optical drives.

3) Put the hard drive in an external enclosure.

Those are your options.

[klowngoblin]

i wouln't go with a PCI controller, thats costs WAY more money than an external enclosure. external enclosures are only $25USD where as a pci controller is like $50

what i would do is

have your OS HDD and DVD drive on ide ch 0
have your 2nd HDD and CD on ide ch 1
have your 3rd HDD (storage) in an external USB enclosure.

make sure you only have 1 HDD and 1 ODD per power lead from your PSU

[Ice Czar]

i wouln't go with a PCI controller, thats costs WAY more money than an external enclosure. external enclosures are only $25USD where as a pci controller is like $50


????

$22 (http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductdesc.asp?description=16-102-002&depa=1)
Promise TX2 (I have a few) dual channel, support for 4 devices

on top of which an internal controller gives you ATA100 UDMA mode5 100MB/s burst
and any external enclosure with the exception of eSATA is going to come no where near that for throughput

[Othersider]

IDE is limited to two devices maximum, per controller. Hence the term, master and slave or "Primary and secondary" there is no 'tertiary' drive system for IDE, so you will never find a 3 (4) head IDE cable.

I hate to say this, but Fry's does (or at least used to) sell a Pactech 7 connector 48" IDE (yes, 100% certain it was IDE). Now, the supposed reason for this was to allow easy customization of drive placement in huge tower cases, but I know someone like the original poster must have purchased it and connected 6 drives.

I shudder to think what happened.

[Ice Czar]

No Malogato is correct IDE\ATA\ATAPI doesnt support more than 2 devices per channel by any means

that was a SCSI protocol cable
or something proprietary it wasnt ATA\IDE


http://www.ata-atapi.com/
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/std.htm

[Othersider]

No Malogato is correct IDE\ATA doesnt support more than 2 devices per channel by any means

that was a SCSI protocol cable


No, it can't. That doesn't mean that cheap no-name companies won't make dumb products. The baggie it was in said "IDE", it was keyed and everything.

[Ice Czar]

the protocol is the protocol
I can put a lable on a bag of marbles and call em candy doesnt mean they are

[Malogato]

i wouln't go with a PCI controller, thats costs WAY more money than an external enclosure. external enclosures are only $25USD where as a pci controller is like $50

what i would do is

have your OS HDD and DVD drive on ide ch 0
have your 2nd HDD and CD on ide ch 1
have your 3rd HDD (storage) in an external USB enclosure.

make sure you only have 1 HDD and 1 ODD per power lead from your PSU


http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=15-104-214&depa=0
$20.76, and it's a 4 port raid controller. Also would give him "potential" of 133 megabytes a second versus the "potential" of 40 megabytes a second. - Know your facts first before posting. Secondly, realistic performance of an external, usb 2.0 drive is closer to 8 megabytes a second (some have been benched up to 20) where 20 megabytes a second would be PITIFULLY slow on a pci card.

Now, are there benefits to having an external enclosure? Hell yeah - portable data for one.

[Malogato]

I hate to say this, but Fry's does (or at least used to) sell a Pactech 7 connector 48" IDE (yes, 100% certain it was IDE). Now, the supposed reason for this was to allow easy customization of drive placement in huge tower cases, but I know someone like the original poster must have purchased it and connected 6 drives.

I shudder to think what happened.
Technically speaking, the devices after the two ports closest to the motherboard (no matter what position on the cable they may have been) would then be completely ignored.
When I was with western digital a lifetime ago, I was actually part of the team that helped CREATE the "ATA" specification. Hopefully, I know something about it. I had nothing to do with S-ata.. and by definition, it is so dissimilair to "p-ata" its amazing it's even being given a similair name. - It's only because of the fact that it still transfers info via the ata protocol, something I never thought would last this long. We had been working on a new protocol when I left, but, to this day, I still see no signs of it. - I think the r&d killed it.