Are 2 Sata h/d's the limit on Abit mobo??

dragonV8dragonV8 not here much New
edited July 2004 in Hardware
G'day folks....i'm curious if we can add more sata h/d's to our main puter.

Abit IC7 Max3 mobo
2 x 120Gig Sata 150 H/D's
Intel P4 3.4
2Gig ram

Sally seems to fill the 2nd 120gig rather quickly with back ups fron the 1st.
We are not running in raid and after reading a multitude of threads about raid, i don't believe it's advantageous to us. (too many problems aswell).

Can we add more sata drives to this puter or do we just get IDE H/D's.

I'm thinking about a bigger H/D for her back ups, leaving the 2nd sata drive for other things. I read in one of the other threads about putting the temp files and page file on say D:, having C: as the OS. Is this hard to set up? Is it worth the effort?

Our daily puters are used for basic putering, no video editing or rendering, etc. Folding, email, PSP8, accounts and for me, adding comments to threads, or starting them.

If we cannot add more sata drives, i will be happy to receive 1 word replies, like "No". :)

Thanks in advance.

Jon

Comments

  • GobblesGobbles Ventura California
    edited July 2004
    you are limited by the number of sata ports on the motherboard. However you can always add in a sata controller as well or you can add in regular pata drives in combo with the sata drives giving you from 6 to 8 possible drives, depending on how many onboard sata ports you have.

    Gobbles
  • GobblesGobbles Ventura California
    edited July 2004
    Onbaord SATA/RAID: 2x SATA RAID 0/1 via ICH5R; 4x SATA RAID 0/1/0+1 via Silicon Image Chip

    Ok I looked at your board. You can get 6 sata drives on there... Damn... You have 4 along the bottom edge of the mobo and 2 behing the ide ports...

    Gobbles
  • dragonV8dragonV8 not here much New
    edited July 2004
    Gobbles wrote:
    Onbaord SATA/RAID: 2x SATA RAID 0/1 via ICH5R; 4x SATA RAID 0/1/0+1 via Silicon Image Chip

    Ok I looked at your board. You can get 6 sata drives on there... Damn... You have 4 along the bottom edge of the mobo and 2 behing the ide ports...

    Gobbles


    Is that 6 stand alone drives on the mobo as it is or through a controller?

    Might just pull the side of the case and have a look. Guess i should have done that in the first place, instead of doing online research, lol.

    Thanks for replying Gobbles. :thumbsup:
    I'll go have a look now.
  • dragonV8dragonV8 not here much New
    edited July 2004
    Oooops................You're correct Gobbles. (Not that i had doubt).

    Just had a look and i can add 4 more sata drives..... :woowoo:

    Thanks again..................problem fixed. :thumbsup:
  • mmonninmmonnin Centreville, VA
    edited July 2004
    Ever thought of an external HDD for backups?
  • dragonV8dragonV8 not here much New
    edited July 2004
    mmonnin wrote:
    Ever thought of an external HDD for backups?

    I actually have been looking at those, Marc. The idea of an internal drive is for simplicity as it is really only for Sally's puter. All the folding ones have 2 x H/D's and very little to back-up.

    Only one of them has pretty much everything that Sally's has as a back-up unit, should hers fail. Occasionally i back-up my laptop to one of the others through the network. Guess this is where one of those external ones come in handy.

    Any advise as to which enclosure stands out, or are they much the same?

    Any advantage having firewire as well as usb?

    Thanks for the thought. :thumbsup:
  • Mt_GoatMt_Goat Head Cheezy Knob Pflugerville (north of Austin) Icrontian
    edited July 2004
    The best and fastest would be an external SATA enclosure connected through a PCI controller with an external port.
  • dragonV8dragonV8 not here much New
    edited July 2004
    If this needs another PCI card, i'm afraid we can't do it. As it's Sally's main puter, it has every slot filled/covered. Tv, audio, usb card, usb/firewire and who knows what else. Due to the thickness of a couple of them, i think 2 slots are left vacant. Tried moving them about but could not free one up.

    Even got a 4 port powered usb hub hooked up. Running 2 printers, a scanner, graphics tablet, etc. Another reason why the wiring/cabling has been such a mess. (starting to get it sorted though).

    Might have to stick with the usb or usb/firewire one, should she want one.
  • OverLoadOverLoad
    edited July 2004
    Real quick question-Im getting ready to install 2 80 sata Hd's. What would be the benefit of putting them in a raid 0 configuration as supposed to an ordinary primary-secondary?
  • mmonninmmonnin Centreville, VA
    edited July 2004
    Read/Write speed would go up almost double if done right.
  • dragonV8dragonV8 not here much New
    edited July 2004
    Thanks for the input guys. Got a good deal on 2 x 200Gig WD Sata drives. :)

    I'll just plug them into the mobo, after fitting them ofcourse. Big case with plenty of room. That should give Sally plenty of HDD space to play with. :thumbsup:
  • OverLoadOverLoad
    edited July 2004
    ok in another thread i was reading that a 64bot board doesnt do so well with raid on a msi k8 neo-am i wrong?
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