3 hard drives stacked

I know you can stack 3 hds no pro i have heard of it done and have done 2 hds myself but i was just wondering if there was any special hardware i need to do this fyi 1st disk for os 2nd disk for progs 3rd disk for mp3 etc. I will being running it on a asus p4g8x deluxe if that makes any difference, Also if anyone can point me twoard a guide or something similar i would be much obliged Thnx

-Godsten

sorry know this is a total n00b question but.... what can i say i am a n00b

You should have no problem w/3 drives. IDE 1-1 master, 1 slave.
IDE 2-1 master, CD or DVD as slave.

I was thinking of using a raid controller in one of the pci slots to connect the hd to and use the ide connections on the board for the dvd + cdrw drives i was searchin the web and thougth that this might be a good way of going about it.... if not or anyone forsees any probs pleae let me know so i can not order the components. thnx

-Godsten

Godsten said:

I was thinking of using a raid controller in one of the pci slots to connect the hd to and use the ide connections on the board for the dvd + cdrw drives i was searchin the web and thougth that this might be a good way of going about it.... if not or anyone forsees any probs pleae let me know so i can not order the components. thnx

-Godsten

Click to expand...

Yep that's the way to do it!
That's what I done.
I'm using a Promise TX2000 RAID 0 with 2 Maxtor DM +9s.
Very fast. And I do have a 3td HD on my regular IDE channel.
You'll learn to prefer the pci controller over the built in, especially if you ever do RAID because you can easily migrate all the components to another mobo if need be. Plus you never have to buy onboard raid controllers anymore. Plus they work better than onboard raid controllers. And they will save you money in the long run. Lastly the pci controllers are not as apt to cause BIOS conflicts, and booting up your system as are the onboard raid controllers. So even if you don't wish to RAID your HDs right now, you still can have the channels for seperate HDs.

Cheers,
Mike

Mike360000 said:

Yep that's the way to do it!
That's what I done.
I'm using a Promise TX2000 RAID 0 with 2 Maxtor DM +9s.
Very fast. And I do have a 3td HD on my regular IDE channel.
You'll learn to prefer the pci controller over the built in, especially if you ever do RAID because you can easily migrate all the components to another mobo if need be. Plus you never have to buy onboard raid controllers anymore. Plus they work better than onboard raid controllers. And they will save you money in the long run. Lastly the pci controllers are not as apt to cause BIOS conflicts, and booting up your system as are the onboard raid controllers. So even if you don't wish to RAID your HDs right now, you still can have the channels for seperate HDs.

Cheers,
Mike

Click to expand...

Okay so let me ask you, you can see my sig and what I have. I have a raid 0 setup using a pci raid card. I also have a cdrw drive and a dvd drive on the same ide cable connected to ide # 2 the cdr set as a master. Can I connect a spare 60 GB hard drive I have to IDE #1 and use it as a backup storage drive in case one of my raid 0 drives fails. If so how would I be able to access th8is data if there is no os on the drive?

Or is it better to connect the drive to IDE 2 and have the cdrw and dvd on IDE with the CDRW as master and dvd as slave?

If I choose not to use the drive I never thought "doh" that I could have the cdrw and the dvd drive on their own ide controllers for better performance.

I just wanna protect my data and the above never crossed my mind til I read the thread. I do not care so much about speed and performance on the back up drive.

Cisco Kid

"Okay so let me ask you, you can see my sig and what I have. I have a raid 0 setup using a pci raid card. I also have a cdrw drive and a dvd drive on the same ide cable connected to ide # 2 the cdr set as a master. Can I connect a spare 60 GB hard drive I have to IDE #1 and use it as a backup storage drive in case one of my raid 0 drives fails. If so how would I be able to access th8is data if there is no os on the drive?"

The best way to setup your CD drives is to have each on their own Channel. Say have 1 CD drive paired with a HD. It doesn't work quiet as well to have 2 CD drives on the same channel, although I do. It just depends on various things. Anyhow make at least 1 CD drive master. You can have your HD as either master or slave with your other CD drive.

I do use my 3td HD for backup of Windows and files.
You need a program such as Norton Ghost to do that.
With it you can make an image file with which you can keep your HD running with your main OS HDs or you can make a mirror of your OS and files, but you must unhook the HD after making a mirror because you don't want 2 copies of Windows being able to access each other.


"Or is it better to connect the drive to IDE 2 and have the cdrw and dvd on IDE with the CDRW as master and dvd as slave?

If I choose not to use the drive I never thought "doh" that I could have the cdrw and the dvd drive on their own ide controllers for better performance."

Performance-wise the only problem with having 2 CD ROM drives on the same channel is if you are using 1 to read from while taking that data and writing straight to the CD ROM burner at the same time. Other than that, no problem....... I always make images first and burn from that, so it doesn't matter with me.


"I just wanna protect my data and the above never crossed my mind til I read the thread. I do not care so much about speed and performance on the back up drive."

I have 2 Maxtors as RAID 0 on a pci Promise TX 2000 controller card. Each set as master on each channel.

For my onboard IDE channels I have a Kenwood 72X and Yamaha 44X24X44X CD burner on IDE Channel 2 and a LS-120 set as master and my third HD set as slave on IDE Channel 1.

Cheers,
Mike

Mike360000 said:

"Okay so let me ask you, you can see my sig and what I have. I have a raid 0 setup using a pci raid card. I also have a cdrw drive and a dvd drive on the same ide cable connected to ide # 2 the cdr set as a master. Can I connect a spare 60 GB hard drive I have to IDE #1 and use it as a backup storage drive in case one of my raid 0 drives fails. If so how would I be able to access th8is data if there is no os on the drive?"

The best way to setup your CD drives is to have each on their own Channel. Say have 1 CD drive paired with a HD. It doesn't work quiet as well to have 2 CD drives on the same channel, although I do. It just depends on various things. Anyhow make at least 1 CD drive master. You can have your HD as either master or slave with your other CD drive.

I do use my 3td HD for backup of Windows and files.
You need a program such as Norton Ghost to do that.
With it you can make an image file with which you can keep your HD running with your main OS HDs or you can make a mirror of your OS and files, but you must unhook the HD after making a mirror because you don't want 2 copies of Windows being able to access each other.


"Or is it better to connect the drive to IDE 2 and have the cdrw and dvd on IDE with the CDRW as master and dvd as slave?

If I choose not to use the drive I never thought "doh" that I could have the cdrw and the dvd drive on their own ide controllers for better performance."

Performance-wise the only problem with having 2 CD ROM drives on the same channel is if you are using 1 to read from while taking that data and writing straight to the CD ROM burner at the same time. Other than that, no problem....... I always make images first and burn from that, so it doesn't matter with me.


"I just wanna protect my data and the above never crossed my mind til I read the thread. I do not care so much about speed and performance on the back up drive."

I have 2 Maxtors as RAID 0 on a pci Promise TX 2000 controller card. Each set as master on each channel.

For my onboard IDE channels I have a Kenwood 72X and Yamaha 44X24X44X CD burner on IDE Channel 2 and a LS-120 set as master and my third HD set as slave on IDE Channel 1.

Cheers,
Mike

Click to expand...

thanks Mike for the info, couple more questions

I am leaning towards doing it this way

Right now my Raid 0 has one drive as master one as slave if I remember correctly, if not both are master.

After some thought I am thinking to have my burner on IDE #1 by itself. On IDE#2 I would have my DVD drive as master and the spare hard drive as slave with an image of the raid 0 OS stored on it. Does this make sense, would this drive have to be disconnected after the image is stored on it? I am assuming it would not, it would only have to be disconnected if I create a mirror of the OS on the raid setup correct?

As far as having 2 cd rom devices on the same IDE channel I know it is not the best but I copy on the fly drive to drive and I rarely create a coaster, but while burning I do nothing else in most cases.

Last question if I go the route above which seems the easiest for me once I have created an image of the raid OS I can always continue to store data on the drive as the image will allow me to boot that drive if I ever need to in and this in turn will give me access to the other stored files correct? So I really only need an image of the raid OS for booting purpose and prolly best to create the image while the OS is relatively small on the raid setup right?

Again thanks for the help

Cisco KId

Cisco Kid

"Right now my Raid 0 has one drive as master one as slave if I remember correctly, if not both are master."

Both HDs in a RAID should be set as master, each on their own channel. If not performance will suffer.


"After some thought I am thinking to have my burner on IDE #1 by itself. On IDE#2 I would have my DVD drive as master and the spare hard drive as slave with an image of the raid 0 OS stored on it. Does this make sense, would this drive have to be disconnected after the image is stored on it? I am assuming it would not, it would only have to be disconnected if I create a mirror of the OS on the raid setup correct?"

That would work fine.
No the HD would not have to be dissconnected.
Yes you can store whatever else you like on the HD.



"As far as having 2 cd rom devices on the same IDE channel I know it is not the best but I copy on the fly drive to drive and I rarely create a coaster, but while burning I do nothing else in most cases."

Only performance, time taken, is the problem with 2 CD drives on the same channel. Otherwise you're fine.



Last question if I go the route above which seems the easiest for me once I have created an image of the raid OS I can always continue to store data on the drive as the image will allow me to boot that drive if I ever need to in and this in turn will give me access to the other stored files correct? So I really only need an image of the raid OS for booting purpose and prolly best to create the image while the OS is relatively small on the raid setup right?

Unfortunantly you can't boot from a image. However you can from a mirror. But if you have an image, all you do is copy the image back to the RAID and you're good to go. In Norton Ghost for example, to make and image or to copy the image back to the main HDs, you do all this in DOS mode. Ghost has you to make DOS bottable diskette that contains the Ghosting program that does whichever you choose, mirroring or imaging.

Remember, whatever you image or mirror is ALL that you will have when you install/copy/image/mirror that back to your main HDs-RAID. You will lose everything that is not on the image or in the mirror. That is unless you have backups of everything else somewhere else. It is best to make a image or mirror every week or depending on how you want to go without updating that image or mirror.

Personally I go from 1 to 3 weeks between mirrors/images.

Cheers,
Mike