How Do I Install A Third Internal Hard Drive?

[Mad Cat]

I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to have them on the same IDE channel, but megh.

[4th gen]

I've got three internal drives. My Boot drive is on the primary IDE cable with my CDRW drive. My second drive is on the secondary IDE cable by itself. The third is on S-ATA.

It's generally recommended that you don't put an optical drive and a HDD on the same IDE cable, transfer rates can take a big hit. However, if it's only for a little while to transfer a few files, it shouldn't do any damage

[delphin460]

4th , that general recommendation come from the days of ide 33 and pent 1 era

new ultra ide from 66 up , was designed to fix this problem, you will not find a mobo manufacturer that suggests not to run that config now

[J'Pol]

I have 3 hdd's and 1 DVD burner.

2 of the hdd are attached inside of the computer and on the same channel.

The third hdd is in a removable caddy, this is the one with the media on it. This drive is on the same ide as the DVD writer.

The 2 inside are the root drive with OS and programs and a working drive, used for downloads, ripping etc.

Given that the media drive is used for storage, playback and sharing I have no problem with it being on the same channel as the DVD writer. Particularly as it can supply data faster than the cable modem can upload it.

I would suggest that you secure the drive before transferring 50Gb of data. you wouldn't want it shaking while the data is being transferred. Too much risk of physically damaging the surfaces.

[Mad Cat]

Fine I'm wrong.

[Virtualbody1234]

No matter which way you look at it, since it's only a temporary arrangement, it doesn't really matter. I would unplug the two (2) optical drives and connect the third hard drive to that cable. You probably don't need the optical drive(s) while you do the data transfer anyway.