Can you have more then 4 hard drives???

[Mini-Me]

Hi all.
I need to put another physical drive in my machine, but all four IDE positions on both controllers are used.(2 hard-drives on primary IDE, and two CD-drives on secondary IDE...)

I have heard, that you can put another IDE controller card in your machine, but I am having an exceedingly difficult time finding anyone who makes or sells these cards...
:(

I don't want to upgrade my existing drives to bigger capacity ones, and don't want to partition a big drive into several little logical ones.

Any thoughts?

Currently, I have a home-network(10/100 speed), and have a PC with a 120GB drive in it and Win98. The 120GB is partitioned into several 20GB chunks, and I suck what I need from this macine over the network, but would like to have this drive in my main XP machine as one 120GB drive, if I can...

...but I have run out of IDE ports!...
:p


MM.

[Mini-Me]

BTW: Some of you are probably wondering why I said I don't want to partition a big drive, when I have done exacty that with the 120GB in the 98 machine. The 98 machine is a glorified hard-drive server, running 98, only so I can talk to the contents of the drive via the network - there is no keyboard, mouse or screen on this box. I had to partition, as 98 does not like partitions bigger then 32GB, so I adopted 20GB, as it is easy to divide a 120GB drive into even chunks with this partition size, and is completely compatible with 98...

[Whyzman]

It is my understanding that at as long as you are using individual ide channels (through MB or PCI cards) that you can add additional drives.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?Submit=Go&DEPA=0&type=&description=pci+ide+card&Category=0&minPrice=&maxPrice=&Go.x=0&Go.y=0

[jdbaines]

IDE cards, 2 channels, each for 2 items (master & slave) available from PCWorld - not expensive (about £29.99 I think).
Can be IDE only as above, but another version also has 2 x SATA connectors (£49.99 I think, but has been subject of an offer recently).
I have 1 extra card, carrying 2 HDD, one dvd/cd device.

[Fruss Tray Ted]

I had to partition, as 98 does not like partitions bigger then 32GB

Isn't that a older BIOS limitation? I thought 9x didn't have a problem until 137 gigs as long as your mobo can handle it.

[Mini-Me]

According to what I have read, technically the 98 docs say it supports up to 2TB drives, but the understanding is that it does not work reliably with more then 32GB. I have read this on the MS site too somewhere.

I have sourced a IDE card from one of my suppliers now - thanks to those who pointed me in the right direction.


MM.