my computer parts are here... and 1st mistake made

[young]

i just picked up the parts for my newer, faster, better system except for the vid card still waiting & should be here by friday.

of course, i made my first miscalculation - i forgot that i can only have 4 ide devices - i have cdrw, dvd, 20GB hd and i ordered 2 new 60GB harddrives... but, i've made this into a blessing. i will attach the old 20GB temporarily, move any important documents and then install the other 60gb afterwards. as for my excuse, last time i put together a system was 3 long years ago - my celery300A.

ok, the plan for saturday is to:
put together all pieces
make boot disk for win2k & install win2k
install new drivers/applications
simple, right? right?

soyo dragon+ (builit in NIC)
AMD 1700+ retail
512MB DDR
2 60 GB ibm harddrives
GeForce3 Ti200 vid card
adaptec 4300 firewire kit
old CD-RW - 4x write
old DVD - 5x
old case - full tower
old SB Live w/ Cambridge fourpoint (4.1) speakers
old keyboard, mouse, floppy
old 19" hitachi superscan 753 display
Win2K pro

[Blake]

I've got a Maxtor card that you can install to allow for 4 more IDE devices - it works perfectly and even though I don't need it any more, I leave it in my computer just in case...a simple solution to your problem.

[MichaelBlanton]

You can just boot off the Win2k cd. No need to make a boot disk.

Make sure you've already downloaded (and burned to cd) the latest Soundblaster, video, nic, and any miscellaneous motherboard drivers. If you'll lose your internet connection make sure you've planned around that!

What does one do with 120 gigs of HD space? My biggest server at work has a 9 gig volume that holds data files for 70 users.

Sounds like a fun Saturday. Good luck.

[X]

Yeah, I've been thinking of getting an IDE card. 4 devices is crazy!

I'm used to SCSI and am already feeling constrained by not being able to put in 2 DVD drives and a future DVD writer in my home theater computer.

[Trigger]

I have 2 60GB Hard Drives in Raid0... it's schweet and even with a CD Burner and a DVDRom drive, I still have room for 2 more IDE devices. Get a Promise Raid controller. It'll make those 60GB drives run faster and act as one large 120GB drive. Schweet. Use the 20GB drive to back up mp3s or porn to.

[X]

Originally posted by Trigger
I have 2 60GB Hard Drives in Raid0... it's schweet and even with a CD Burner and a DVDRom drive, I still have room for 2 more IDE devices. Get a Promise Raid controller. It'll make those 60GB drives run faster and act as one large 120GB drive. Schweet.

And if one of them dies you lose them both! Schweet!

[Trigger]

Originally posted by X
And if one of them dies you lose them both! Schweet!

Wahhh - I lost my porn - waahhh.. I lost my Hootie and the Blowfish MP3s - waah... just kidding... nah - I know the risk and I'm willing to take it - I can back up my really important stuff - that's why having the 20GB drive in there too would be good.

[X]

Originally posted by Trigger

Wahhh - I lost my porn - waahhh.. I lost my Hootie and the Blowfish MP3s - waah... just kidding... nah - I know the risk and I'm willing to take it - I can back up my really important stuff - that's why having the 20GB drive in there too would be good.

Just wanted to make sure the warning got included with the praise.

[young]

holy cow, gone a couple of minutes and all these replies!!! thanks for the suggestions, everyone.

blake & X, i'll look into the maxtor card. i was going to use the old 20GB to hold my junk files - mp3s, whatever... so i didn't totally need it. but the maxtor card may work out - i don't want to waste the 20GBs.

michael, yes, that is another excellent suggestion that i forgot to think about. you probably saved half of saturday. i don't think i need 60GBs, but it was $20 more than the 40GB drive so what the heck... as for the other 60GBs, i want to do some video editing and will use that exclusively. the dv video takes like 216mb/minute so that's what - about 5 min/gb, 60x5 is 5 hours of video? roughly. i'm using the numbers from the firewire kit. not sure what the actual usage will be like. our server at work are 60GB drives b/c we do a lot of graphic/CAD/3D work.

trigger, the soyo board has built in RAID and i may look into that in the future. and no, i don't have any porn, really! all my mp3s come from my personal collection of hundreds of cds (ok, i downloaded a few but i usually buy the cds right after if they're any good! otherwise, i delete them!)

[gcribbs]

Originally posted by X
Just wanted to make sure the warning got included with the praise.

this is why I decided against it. my A7V133 has a promise controller built in and I toyed with the idea of raid 0. I realized the speed benefit was not worth it for me. of course the eight ide drives by using the promise controller is worth it

I am adding a 60 Gb WD hard drive from you know where X and I will have 120 GB of space and 3 spots left. I think my case will be full before I use them all

maybe I need to build another computer just for the extra room

My younger brother thinks I am sick by the way. I keep upgrading while he is using my old 466 celeron.

[twikoff]

my abit be6 II board has 4 ide slots..
2 ata66 slots and 2 standard ata33 slots

Im running 4 devices, all as master

my primary harddrive (45gb) is on the ata66 primary as master and running as udma4.. my backup harddrive (60gb) is running as secondary master and running as udma4.. my plextor burner is primary master on the ata33.. and my pioneer dvd-rom is seconday master on the ata33..

i still have room for 4 devices.. but havent decided what to put there


I also have a 15gb harddrive that I slave out.. and copy info to.. when I want to carry alot of files to work.. or when I go to a different location.. or to loan to friends (by alot of info.. I mean 10-15 gigs.. not amounts that I want to bother putting on cds)

[X]

Thanks so much for sharing.

[young]

i don't see a maxtor ide card (except bundled w/ a hard drive). are these cards worth considering?

PROMISE ULTRA100TX2 CONTROLLER CARD - OEM 2 Channel IDE Supports UDMA 33/66/100 - $23

SIIG Dual Channel Ultra ATA/100 - RETAIL P/N# SC-PE4A12 $40

i may just run over to the local microcenter or compusa.

ah, found it on ebay. and at compusa website:
Maxtor Ultra ATA/100 PCI Adapter $50! if its that much, its not worth it to me.

[gcribbs]

Originally posted by young
i don't see a maxtor ide card (except bundled w/ a hard drive). are these cards worth considering?

PROMISE ULTRA100TX2 CONTROLLER CARD - OEM 2 Channel IDE Supports UDMA 33/66/100 - $23

SIIG Dual Channel Ultra ATA/100 - RETAIL P/N# SC-PE4A12 $40

i may just run over to the local microcenter or compusa.

ah, found it on ebay. and at compusa website:
Maxtor Ultra ATA/100 PCI Adapter $50! if its that much, its not worth it to me.

the maxtor had a mail in rebate when you also bought a qualifying maxtor hard drive. maybe Blake will give you a deal since he is not using his. email him to see. his email adress should be available since he is a Mod

Promise controllers are nice also and 23 bucks sounds like a good price. I would pass on the SIIG however.

[Xanager]

Can't you just get a IDE cable with three connectors? One for the mobo, one for the master, one for the slave.

Use this cable to hook up the CDRW. By default CD will be slave and the HD will be master.

[young]

well, the way it would be setup:
one cable to the mb - connects HD#1 as master, HD #2 as slave
2nd cable to the mb - connects DVD as master, CD RW as slave.

and that's all the free slots...

[X]

Originally posted by Xanager
Can't you just get a IDE cable with three connectors? One for the mobo, one for the master, one for the slave.

Use this cable to hook up the CDRW. By default CD will be slave and the HD will be master.

I haven't been keeping track of the devices, but I'm pretty sure there's no default. The devices would have to be jumpered as master/slave or as cable select and put into the correct connector.

[Xanager]

Originally posted by young
well, the way it would be setup:
one cable to the mb - connects HD#1 as master, HD #2 as slave
2nd cable to the mb - connects DVD as master, CD RW as slave.

and that's all the free slots...

ah, right. sorry, I was confusing myself.

[mikehunt]

that's why I got an Abit mobo, has 2 UDMA33, and 2 UDMA66, now they have 2 UDMA66 and 2 UDMA100
8 EIDE devices total

[mikehunt]

I have 80 total, using about 30 and I haven't even reinstalled my games yet from the last time windows died. this includes a back up of some stuff (my current win drive and my previous windows95/dos6.2 dual boot setup from before my upgrade, incase I ever get nostalgic)

Originally posted by MichaelBlanton


What does one do with 120 gigs of HD space? My biggest server at work has a 9 gig volume that holds data files for 70 users.

Sounds like a fun Saturday. Good luck.

[Trigger]

Originally posted by X
Just wanted to make sure the warning got included with the praise.

Oh I know - I was just trying to be funny. You're right though - I may end up popping another drive into an IDE slot just to back up my most important stuff.

[young]

2nd mistake (well, not really but it irks me a little).
bought pc2100 memory directly from crucial for 53.09 each (2x). found it on bestbuy.com for 34.99 each w/ another $10 rebate...
crucial has 20% restocking fee for non-defective/compatible memory. the difference is still about $20 which will basically cover the promise ide card...

[Jabx]

is the ram at bestbuy made by crucial?

it may not really matter, but there is an excellent chance that the BB cheapo memory is crappy, whereas crucial is very high quality

[Dave99]

I'll let you know soon, I just put in another 40 gigs in my NT4.0 server box. On my home LAN, that makes about 130 gigs of space, of which a pretty good chunk (about 80 gigs) is full.
Surprisingly, not much of that is pr0n, maybe 5-6 gigs.

Dave

Originally posted by MichaelBlanton

What does one do with 120 gigs of HD space? My biggest server at work has a 9 gig volume that holds data files for 70 users.

[young]

Originally posted by JabX
is the ram at bestbuy made by crucial?

it may not really matter, but there is an excellent chance that the BB cheapo memory is crappy, whereas crucial is very high quality

yeah, its crucial memory. when i spoke to the crucial customer rep, she said best buy bought the memory when it was really cheap so they can still sell it at a lower price.