new drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bob Hansen
  • Start date Start date
B

Bob Hansen

Hi Group,
I looked for a group that was more suited to my question, didn't find it. I
got a DVD writing drive for Christmas. I already have 2 optical drives. My
question is, what is the best way to hook up the third drive? The cable
going to the hard drive has no extra plug and appears to be a different kind
of cable. An IDE cable with three plugs seems hard to find around here. The
other potential solution is a PCI card where I can run another cable to the
drive. Just curious what would be the best way to go here. Appreciate any
ideas you may have.
Bob
 
Bob Hansen said:
Hi Group,
I looked for a group that was more suited to my question, didn't find it.
I got a DVD writing drive for Christmas. I already have 2 optical drives.
My question is, what is the best way to hook up the third drive? The cable
going to the hard drive has no extra plug and appears to be a different
kind of cable. An IDE cable with three plugs seems hard to find around
here. The other potential solution is a PCI card where I can run another
cable to the drive. Just curious what would be the best way to go here.
Appreciate any ideas you may have.
Bob
Click to expand...

One option is to put the new optical drive in an external USB IDE 5.25"
enclosure and run it from a USB port. I don't know of any IDE cables with
more than two connectors, two is the limit as far as I know.
 
Bob said:
I looked for a group that was more suited to my question, didn't find it.
I got a DVD writing drive for Christmas. I already have 2 optical drives.
My question is, what is the best way to hook up the third drive?
Click to expand...

Removing an existing one, or start using SATA for your hard drives, or get
another PATA controller. Ideally, you shouldn't have more than one PATA
drive per cable if you want the best performance out of what you have,
because you can only use one device per cable at a time anyway.
 
Bob said:
Hi Group,
I looked for a group that was more suited to my question, didn't find
it. I got a DVD writing drive for Christmas. I already have 2 optical
drives. My question is, what is the best way to hook up the third
drive? The cable going to the hard drive has no extra plug and
appears to be a different kind of cable. An IDE cable with three
plugs seems hard to find around here. The other potential solution is
a PCI card where I can run another cable to the drive. Just curious
what would be the best way to go here. Appreciate any ideas you may
have. Bob
Click to expand...

Do you really need more than two?
 
You "could" replace one of the "older" optical drives with this new DVD
writer drive. DVD writer drives also can write to CDs and can read
both DVDs/CDs.
 
Thanks for your replies. You are right, I can live with 2 drives. I just
have this "problem" about getting things working the way I want.
 
Back
Top