Connect 7 IDE & 1 SATA drive?

[gavin watson]

Hi all, newbie here...

I want to connect 7 IDE and 1 SATA drive to my PC, and was wondering what the easiest/cheapest way of doing this would be?

I was thinking maybe stacking USB external drives, but how many will I be able to stack? 8? already have 3 IDE slots taken up on MB (1 drive & 2 CD's) could maybe get a IDE PCI card, but I believe that will only give me 4 more (2 master & 2 slave) or maybe 2 PCI cards, will this give me 8 IDE expansion slots?

Any advise, comments would be greatly appreciated.

many thnaks!

 

[trmentry]

I used to have 2 of these for 8 ide drives.

http://www.cooldrives.com/qulcdfi80inc.html

had them on a FW 800 card and worked well in Windows. Was able to have Windows Raid them up. Not so sure that can be done with USB. Never tried.

I liked Firewire better than USB for the faster xfers.

 

[xenotype]

Actually, from that vendor:

http://www.cooldrives.com/8hadrusb20ra.html

looks pretty good. 8 (PATA/IDE) drives in a single enclosure, over USB2.0 interface, and less than 300 bux? good deal, i might be in for one. Fill it with some 500 gigers

 

[gavin watson]

hi xenotype, tats exactly what im looking for, excellent, many thanks, now just need to find a company that will ship it over to europe for me as cooldrive doesnt ship outside US.

thanks again.

 

[DriveEuro]

That's a really cool enclosure. I would assume that 8 drive one doesn't have any raid capabilities beyond "span" and JBOD though..?