How many devices can I have?

[gas-man]

Hey all,

I've got an MSI K7D Master-L and a Promise ATA133 Controller Card.

Right now I have the following hooked up to the card:
IDE 1 --> Maxtor 80gb 7200 + Maxtor 40gb 7200
IDE 2 --> Liteon 40x12048x + HP 200i DVD+RW Burner

Motherboard:
IDE1 --> None / None
IDE2 --> None / None

Seeing as how I've got nothing on the motherboard right now, could I? Could I run up to 8 IDE devices?

[mbentley]

yup, you should be able to run up to 8 devices with no problem. i have never used a pci ide controller, but i think that the primary channel master drive will automatically be the boot drive, if i am not mistaken... there might be a way that you can boot from a drive on the card instead of the primary master on your mobo, but yes you can run 8 drives total.

[Namagomi]

yeah, you definitly can. I can run up to 12 devices on my mobo (4 channel raid and 2 IDE)

[mbentley]

Originally posted by Namagomi
yeah, you definitly can. I can run up to 12 devices on my mobo (4 channel raid and 2 IDE)

wow that must be great to be able to have 12 without any extra cards... i am limited to 4 :rolleyes: i guess will have to break down any buy a pci card for more...

[gas-man]

Good to know, thanks guys!

[loudblaster]

You can boot off the add in card. I have done it no problems.

[mbentley]

Originally posted by loudblaster
You can boot off the add in card. I have done it no problems.

does it show up in your bios where you can select a drive or what? or is it a seperate bios on the add in card? just curious for future reference.

[gas-man]

Yea, you can boot off the card (look above - all my devices are on the card)

After normal BIOS, the card has its own BIOS where it detects drives, then boots into windows.

[mbentley]

Originally posted by gas-man
Yea, you can boot off the card (look above - all my devices are on the card)

After normal BIOS, the card has its own BIOS where it detects drives, then boots into windows.

that's what i was figuring. thanks for the clarifications on that one. that should help me in my search for a card... i am looking to obtain a few more drives since i am running low on storage space due to a large collection of music and movies (not pron :D ) and i am looking to get a cheap disk to run linux just for kicks... i have mandrake that i downloaded the iso's for so i might as well use them... plus it doesn't hurt to be able to use it ya know?

[gas-man]

Ya I know what you mean. I've got an extra 56x CD-Rom and an extra 20gb 5400RPM drive I may plug in just for the hell of it!