Not enough IDE ports

[Dotan Cohen]

On 15/10/2007, Jonathan Hirschman <jonathan at hirschman.net> wrote:
> Dotan Cohen wrote:
> > There's a good chance that my next motherboard won't have enough IDE
> > ports, and I've got too much IDE hardware to junk it and buy SATA.
> There are PATA<->SATA converters. They allow you to use your PATA
> devices on SATA. This may or may not be appealing, and I cannot testify
> to how well they work.
>
> > How
> > well do PCI cards that add IDE ports work? Any known gotchas?
> They generally work fine. Gotchas? That's very brand and chipset
> specific. Promise won't allow you to have more than three of their cards
> in a box - their onboard BIOS serves as a form of copy protection (they
> want to sell you RAID cards). Not cool.

I need to find out what type this particular card that I have is. If
they're cheap, I may just buy a new one.

> >  Does the
> > OS see them as different from the M/B's IDE ports?
> Shouldn't be different at all; you may or may not be able to boot from a
> device on the card, depending upon the card and your PC's BIOS.
>
> >  Specifically, I
> > need to run two DVD burners and two 400 GB hard drives, all IDE, on a
> > motherboard with one IDE controller and one SATA controller.
> You have a motherboard with ONE PATA connector and ONE SATA, and that's
> it? Wow, that's nasty.

Well, it might have more than one SATA connection, but it's only got
one IDE connection and that's the problem.

> >  Should
> > the hard drives be on the M/B, and the burners (rarely used) on the
> > card, or vice versa?
> >
> I'd think that putting the burners on the card make the most sense. You
> may have boot issues that way.

I'll put the boot hard drive on the m/b, and one burner on it as well
so that I can boot from CD.

Dotan Cohen

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