IDE Devices

From my understanding, you can have as many IDE devices as your system can handle. First thing to check is the power supply, make sure it can handle a large load. Also, if you have spare PCI slots (the white ones on the motherboard) then you can add more devices, another thing to consider is the amount of free space inside the computer case to allow you to safely attach them. Make sure you have plenty of RAM and a good CPU and CPU fan too. Might be a good idea to check the information aboutyour motherboard to see if you can do this. Good luck.

Hi,

I think the above answer was trying to say that you can have more than 4 IDE drives but most motherboards only have two controllers and each controller is capable of having two drives... hence the perceived limit.

You can buy IDE controller cards that are PCI based so as long as you have a PCI slot available, then you can add more.

Another alternative is to but a motherboard that has more than two controllers. Many motherboards have built in raid these days - and often this is IDE raid - they will probably come with two more controllers (mine does...) and give you up to eight drives with no additional hardware needed.

Cheers,
Tim.

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