extra hdd for desktop

[slappy369]

Hi. I have been doing some research and have basically been going in circles about this. i already have 2 hard drives in my desktop. I was wondering if it was possible to introduce a third(internal hdd). is there a way to connect 2 IDE cables together and in that case is there a way to add more power wires together?

 

[Xie]

No, you cannot hook 2 IDE cables together, and you could probably split the power but I'm going to go out on a limb and say your PSU (power supply) wouldn't be able to handle it for 3 HD's on the same connector.

If your HD's are still IDE and your motherboard only has 1 IDE controller then you could always get an external HD that runs off USB.

 

[roirraW "edor" ehT]

Hi. I have been doing some research and have basically been going in circles about this. i already have 2 hard drives in my desktop. I was wondering if it was possible to introduce a third(internal hdd). is there a way to connect 2 IDE cables together and in that case is there a way to add more power wires together?

In short, no. Each IDE "Channel" can only communicate with up to two devices (designated master and slave). Except in the most dire circumstances, you shouldn't put a hard drive on the same IDE cable as an optical drive, either.

Your options are:

1. Remove the optical drive and make it (or buy) an external USB optical drive. The possible bad side of this is depending on how old your system is (possibly old if it doesn't have SATA) you might not be able to boot from a USB optical drive, which may or may not effect you depending on whether you ever install Windows from scratch or run an emergency recovery CD/DVD.

2. Buy an additional hard drive controller. If you do you might as well buy a SATA HD controller since SATA hard drives are cheaper for the size compared to old IDE (PATA) hard drives.

Here's a SATA controller card that handles up to four SATA hard drives.

Here's a combo 2x SATA + 1x IDE controller.

Here's a 2x IDE controller (which handles two devices each for a total of four).

Or option 3. that Xie mentioned, external (USB) hard drives, although I'd rather have an external optical drive than hard drive. The access speed is so much slower for hard drives. I use my optical drives externally.