Cheap way to connect 10 hard drives to a computer

[Wallslide]

Do you guys know a cheap way to connect 10 IDE hard drives to a computer?

 

[Riptides]

Don't PCI-IDE cards support 4 devices, 2 per channel?

2 cards plus onboard IDE-0 controller might get you 10 drives...

IDE PCI card Here

 

[Guden Oden]

Why specifically 10 harddrives, and not some other number? Or rather a total capacity instead.

The more spindles you have whirring away, the greater the statistical probability of failure...

 

[digitalwanderer]

I can hook 8 up to my current board. 4 IDE & 4 sATA, can't you buy add-in cards to control more drives?

 

[Anarchist4000]

A basic IDE controller only costs like $20 now. I'd say just stick a few of those in there. Not sure why you'd want 10 drives in a system without any sort of RAID setup though. Unless you just have a bunch of old drives you want to use.

 

[Frank]

Usb 2.0

 

[Simon F]

Usb 2.0

I've got a couple of USB drives and the performance is not great. I'm contemplating getting a firewire caddy.

 

[Rolf N]

Do you guys know a cheap way to connect 10 IDE hard drives to a computer?

I'd be much more worried about the physical case, power, airflow ... is that already covered?

I've got a couple of USB drives and the performance is not great. I'm contemplating getting a firewire caddy.

Stop contemplating. Get a firewire caddy. You know you won't be at peace until you do

 

[Blazkowicz]

there are cheap SATA cards too, a mobo with 4 SATA and three two-ports SATA cards (with Sil3114 controller, 17€ here) can host ten SATA drives (and you can use an IDE drive for OS + apps)

but, while checking prices on my usual online store I saw that 400GB samsung HDD is at 150€ only! price per GB in the same range as the "smaller" hard drives. it's IDE though.
so, with six disks you can have a software RAID 5 array with 2 "fake" TB capacity.

I think when you do that you'd better have one HDD per IDE channel, so you'd look at using the two mobo IDE ports + two IDE cards, or use three IDE cards for the array. and come around $/€ 1000, including the mobo, IDE cards and HDDs. nice file server in my opinion

 

[FX5900]

i sensed failure.....

 

[the maddman]

3ware used to make some nice PCI ide cards that are just "dumb" but have a switched fabic. You can get an 3ware 5800 or 6800 on ebay cheap since they don't do hardware RAID, but you'll get 8 IDE drives on their own controllers.

 

[Dresden]

i sensed failure.....

Hahahah

 

[Davros]

wouldnt firewire perform like usb 2 firewire = 400mbs iirc

ps: you can get external sata hot plugable too