Can i Daisy chain IDE Hard drives?

Ebenezer_Scrooge_2

Is there a interface, or way to daisy chain IDE drive together? I have 8x 80 gig drives all identical and would like to create a mass storage unit if possible.

albertross_2

There is, but it would be cheaper to buy one big disk than a super nas array.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Generic-Hard-Disk-Drive-500GB/dp/B000OUF6OQ

You can only chain 4 per pc

vyseyboy

Unless you just buy a PCI IDE controller / RAID controller, thus allowing more IDE devices in one computer? Available at all good computer retailers and internet auction sites.

Ebenezer_Scrooge_2

Its just i have these surplus drives, a few power supplys, cases, mobos ect and wanted to experiment with a geeky project

Blacksheep1979

80gb hd's are going to be old and slow tbh this isn't really worth it when you can get a 500gb hd for £60 or less - this isn't really much less than your 8x80gb hd's and will probably be no more expensive and far easier than any other soloution.

fwor

Rather than go for mass storage, why not (as hinted above) get a RAID controller and go for what should be an almost indestructible store for your most important data?

If I had to choose between 80/160GB of RAID array or 640GB of cobbled-together old drives, I know which I'd choose!

Alfie_E

It’s two devices per channel (connector). Almost all consumer motherboards had two channels. As vyseyboy said, if you needed extra channels, you added a PCI controller. Each channel is a shared bus. If two devices are on a single channel, they’re not daisy chained. The operating system controls which device gets to use the bus. FireWire (IEEE 1394) and parallel SCSI are examples of daisy-chain connections.

The latest consumer motherboards often come with a large number of Serial ATA connectors. There, it’s one device per serial bus. But, with motherboards having things like integrated RAID 0+1 and RAID 5, both needing four hard discs, they often have at least six SATA connectors, in total.

tomsolomon

I agree RAID 8 would rock big time.:D
And the more drives you use in a RAID array, the cheaper and more efficient it becomes.

Blacksheep1979

erm it wouldn't be raid 8 - the no. isn't to do with the no. of drives...

But yes for data security you could look at raid 5+0 or if really paranoid about your data raid 5+1

chunter

You'll need a big, relatively expensive psu if you're going to run a lot of ide drives on one machine. If the psu is getting squeezed, I've found the first thing it's gonna physically hurt is the hard drives.