How Can I Connect 3 Hard Drives To My Motherboard At The Same Time?

I currently have 3 hard drives in my system but can't connect them all. My 80 pin hard disk drive motherboard ribbon cable only has connections for a max use of two drives.

The first hard disk drive I always use is my primary master windows xp drive, and the second is a slave secondary drive I use to store data. So in essence I'm always using my first and second hard drive at the same time.

But I than have a 3rd hard drive which is always unattached because my 80 pin hard disk drive motherboard ribbon cable only has connections for a max use of two drives like I said before. I do have windows on this drive too but only use this hard drive to test new software. The problem is When I use this drive I have to detach the two previous drives I mentioned. It's bothersome because I always have to go in my pc case and detach my the ribbon cable off my two other drives just to attach this 3rd test dummy drive by itself. Than when I'm done with the test drive I have to detach it and reattach the real drives I use.

I'm sick and tired of doing it this way and want to know the following:

1. Is there a way for me to attach all 3 drives at the same time so I do not have to open my case to disconnect the ribbon wire, and unplug their molex power cables? I would assume there is some sort of ribbon cable I can use instead of the one I'm using now... If so please show me a link because I can't seem to find one. I don't want to lose hard drive speeds by using such a new cable either so please let me know.

2. If question one is possible how can I set up my pc to choose which windows/hard drive to boot from?



Thank You

 

Motherboards will only support a total of two IDE devices on each individual channel - Primary master, Primary slave / Secondary master, Secondary slave. I don't know of any way to add a third device to a channel. Also, it's unwise to mix optical drives (DVD rom, CD rom, etc.) and hard-drives on the same IDE channel, as this can cause significant speed reductions in data transfer.

If you want to use a third IDE device you can get an external USB enclosure, like one of these: http://directron.com/35inide.html and access it via a USB port. I use one with a 500GB drive for storage, etc.

 

My suggestion would be the enclosure as well. Although I have seen computers with an optical device and a hard drive on the same ribbon. I will not mention any names.....I B M.....oops.

 

If your bios allows. You could use the USB enclosed HDD and allow it to be booted to through the device priority selection. It would be under "Try other boot devices" or something like that.

Again that depends on your bios config.

Then again the transfer rate is less than IDE.

 

Another option if you have a free PCI slot - Hard drive controller card.
Some possibilities at Newegg.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...E&N=2000150410+1193212548+4093&name=$10+-+$25

 

I dont use external but internal racks for my various hdd's that are ide since I only have 1 slot also. I just got this
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817121109
and got an extra tray for it. I just shut down pull it out and slap the other one right in