Are 3 hard drives too many for my pc?

I have 2 drives on my pc...main drive is a 3 gb, my storage drive is an 8 gb. I have another 3 gb from an old pc that has some stuff on it I'd like to hook up to retreive and keep hooked up for extra storage. I'm just worried that 3 drives might be too much for my processor.

can anyone help??

 

processor is unrelated to the number of logical drives you can have.

the problem you'll probably run into is running out of controllers to plug the drives into.

I'd suggest just getting one really big drive. 3gig and 8gig have got to be pretty old.

 

I know, the gig sizes are way small. Unfortunatly, there's nothing I can do about it (financially) now, or in the near future.


I have the controllers to hook into for the drive. I just need to know if it would overwork my pc somehow with 3 drives on it.

 

You should be able to stick as many in there as you've got the plugs for.

 

I dunno about that Soulless. Some of the older machines can only handle four devices on the bus. Otherwise, you're right. If ya have the connectors, it should be okay.
I say go for it. Just be sure your jumpers are set correctly. Master/Slave/Cable Select
etc...

 

You have 4 IDE connectors. So if you only have one CD or DVD ROM you have room for the 3 drives without getting a PCI card to expand your capabilities. There isn't a problem with having 3. Just make sure you set the 3rd drive as master and the ROM as slave on the secondary IDE channel.

 

you should definately be able to do it. i have five drives on my computer that came with 3

dvd drive
cd r/w drive
3 1/2 floppy
20 gig HD
40 gig HD


it only came with a 20gig, 3 1/2, cdr drive.

 

Wait a minute.

Logical drives can only be powered by a worthy power supply. Is your computer an industry standard (Dell, Compaq, etc.), or is it homebrew?

If industry standard, what brand and model #? Or if homebrew, check the box where the power cable plugs into (power supply) and look for a name brand and model #. Oftentimes (as has been the case with my comp several times) the power supply simply cannot handle the load.

However, we also need to need to know whether the drive is internal (e.g., a regular drive), or an external drive (a seperate unit from the computer itself). External drives need to be setup in Win2kPro- as logical drives via System Management...

 

she said she ripped it out of an old pc, so im guessing internal

 

As long as you aren't running one application from 2 different HDs. It went slow as a snail on my Powermac with 2 HDs but I switched the system software folder onto one HD then put everything else in the second HD and it ran fine.

 

Adding additional LOGICAL DRIVES doesn't require additional power supply capacity, unless (as in this case) those new logical drives are actually additional PHYSICAL DRIVES.

One physical drive (the actual hard drive unit) can be split (partitioned) into any number of logical drives ("drive letters") without using any more electrical power.

BTW, eat_some, please PM me concerning the new computer for angel. My wife said you had some parts to contribute? I tried PMing you, but it didn't seem to go through...

 

Having a controller to handle them will be your bigest problem, as was said. Having multiple drives can help performance of some applications, and provides additional online space for storage and backups.

Do you plan on booting from each of these drives, or just storing on them?

 

Xaosflux, I just want to use the other 2 drives for storage. Since I started this thread, my 8 gig (second drive) just shit the bed somehow, windows wouldn't load and the drive kept clicking. I removed that drive and all I had available was another 3 gig and a 1 gig. I put the 3 gig in as a second drive (my first is a 3 also) and use it to store games, pictures, docs etc. I can run games and other programs off of that drive no problem. I'm looking for another drive on ebay but that's a whole other headache.

If anybody has a drive their not using, I pay in cash...

 

You should be fine to add a third drive. The "average" PC has a primary and secondary IDE controller on-board. You can (usually) put two drives on each IDE controller. Traditionally, a HDD (or two) are ribbon cabled from the primary IDE controller and an optical drive (CDROM, RW, DVD or whatever) or two are set up on the secondary. If you had your third HDD piggy backed off your CD on the secondary controller, it might be ok.... Get a cheap raid controller card?

10 or 20Gb HDDs are cheap on eBay, even 7200rpm ones. I'm just setting up a PC for my daughter with a 120Gb HDD! And later I want to try an experimental setup with a SCSI controller card and a 10000rpm SCSI drive alongside an 7200 IDE - which would be better to hold the system partition? Is SATA worth playing with?

 

Bee If you are looking for a small drive cheap, check in your area to see if they have a Goodwill Computer Store. Lots of big companies donate systems, when they get new hardware. You can pick up a small drive say 8 to 10Gb or so for $10-$15.Other than that, check out Price Watch. or better yet, check out what's the best deals in Nebraska from the majors, at Sales Circular. 160GB Hard Drive for $40 sounds pretty good, if you are willing to play the rebate game.

 

Hey Rexy. I was also thinking about doing an SCSI think. The problem is the controller card is going to cost 3 times what the hard drive will cost. Unless you go for an older SCSI set up. But as it is now, the newer SATAs are getting pretty fast. If you have the money, go for the new Serial Attached SCSI (SAS). Seek times under 4ms