Add more space without RAID

[williamp0044]

My computer is beginning to run out of space and I have a hard drive here. I dont want to use RAID because it seems to conflict with my ATI RAEDON 9000. Is there another way to add it?

 

[williamp0044]

All the cables are filled.
I have a DVD Burner.
A CD Burner.
2 HDDS.

 

[KidzMD]

External HDD enclosure with either USB or Firewire connection is probably your best option if your cables are filled.

 

[jpmkm]

Or if you don't want to do external just use throw a pci hard drive controller in there and you have room for four more drives.

 

[D3v1an7]

Wow, somebody's pron collection is a little out of control...

What are the size of your drives?

The reason I ask is if they are small, you could go out and get a couple of larger drives and move everything onto those.

Officemax had an 80GB WD HD w/ an 8MB buffer for $20 after rebates...

 

[KevC]

Originally posted by blackrino9
Officemax had an 80GB WD HD w/ an 8MB buffer for $20 after rebates...

PCI Controller card would be my suggestion...

 

[williamp0044]

Originally posted by jpmkm
Or if you don't want to do external just use throw a pci hard drive controller in there and you have room for four more drives.

I dont want to go external but if the pci hard drive controller is anything like the Promise RAID controller I have here. It will conflict with my AGP card. When I had put it in I was not able to get it to display on the monitor.

 

[williamp0044]

upgrading the drives would be a pain. I have 2 20gb and one 10gb.

 

[jpmkm]

Originally posted by williamp0044
I dont want to go external but if the pci hard drive controller is anything like the Promise RAID controller I have here. It will conflict with my AGP card. When I had put it in I was not able to get it to display on the monitor.

Try it in a different pci slot. Some pci slots share irqs and sometimes that causes stuff to not work. Other than that I don't see any reason why putting in a raid controller would cause video to not work.

 

[Ice Czar]

Originally posted by jpmkm
Try it in a different pci slot. Some pci slots share irqs and sometimes that causes stuff to not work. Other than that I don't see any reason why putting in a raid controller would cause video to not work.

exactly

PIRQ Routing and shared IRQ resources Overview
chipset specific, but a good overview, if you have issues with your onboard RAID controller, and the agp slot, you could probably fix those by manually assigning the IRQs, if your BIOS will allow that (in my case I had to mod the BIOS to do that)

certain PCI slots typically get their own IRQs so if you elect to get a PCI card youre very unlikely to have any issues with the AGP that cant be solved by relocating the card to another slot

In addition, the true throughput of firewire and usb sux in comparision to either IDE{PATA) SATA or SCSI

Originally posted by lessthanjakejohn
The USB standard is in a state of flux, with vendors often using their
own interpretation of the words "full" and "high". At one point, "full
speed" referred to USB 1.1 operating in a USB 2 port at the 12Mb/s
maximum of USB 1.1. "High speed" referred to the standard maximum speed
of USB 2, 480Mb/s. The USB organization has a statement to the effect
that one should determine what is being stated by a vendor from the
vendor itself if there is any doubt about what is being advertized.
This is important since some vendors were using the term "USB 2
compliant" to mean USB 1.1 would work, while customers were interpreting
it as "USB 2".

The USB standards organization still recognizes that Full Speed and Low
Speed refer to USB (formerly known as USB 1.1) transfer rates, and
High-Speed refers to Hi-Speed USB (formerly known as USB 2) at its
maximum transfer rate.

http://www.usb.org/info/usb_nomenclature

The USB-IF's naming and packaging recommendations for low- or full-speed
USB products, as listed on this web site state that such products can
carry only the basic version of the USB logo, which simply states
"Certified USB." We state clearly that manufacturers should avoid using
terminology such as USB 2.0 Full Speed, Full Speed USB or USB 2.0. These
formal recommendations were published to the USB-IF membership and
posted on this web site in August 2002.
[end quote]

Originally posted by PassMark
As there was some discussion about USB speed (Highspeed/FullSpeed), I thought I would mention that there are a number of other factors that impact USB speed. While USB 1.1 vs USB 2.0 is the most important, as already pointed out, USB 2.0 supports FullSpeed (12 Mb/s) and USB 2.0 may only operate below this speed. So it is imporatnt to know whether your USB 2.0 port and device are capable of HighSpeed.

Other issues that impact USB speed include: the manufacturers host controller implementation, point of connectivity to the host controller (e.g. A connection via the PCI bus will insert a bottleneck to achieving High-speed rates. My testing of PCI connected ports show they typically have a much slower maximum speed of 100 - 130Mb/s compared to typically 250Mb/s to 330Mb/s when directly connected to the motherboard, cabling (you might be surprised how much re-transmission is occurring - slowing things down), the device driver used, implementation of the USB device and the implementation of the application software.

This information is based on reliability testing and benchmarking carried out on the recently released USB 2.0 loopback and benchmark plug from www.passmark.com/product/usb2loopback.htm