How many IDE Drives can I install?

Recently I upgraded this computer: Cyrix MII 333+. Also I added a 4th hard drive: WD 4.3 Gb. My 'problem' is that the new hard drive is seen by the puter as a removable drive! The problem occurred when the drive was running off the main board and now that I added a Promise Ultra 33 IDE controller card to be able to run more devices. The new card is great - no problems with the other 3 drives, which were already in the machine. The drive letters remain constant, for which I am grateful! The new drive just isn't being recognised as a fixed disk. I did try another new drive, known good, and the same thing happened. The drives that were already working are 2 Seagates (C: 1.7 Gb & D: 1.2 Gb) and 1 Western Digital (E: 2.1 Gb). The new one is the Western Digital 4.3 Gb. It is UDMA 66, but I am told that should not matter. The drive I used to troubleshoot was a new WD 2.1 Gb - exactly like the old one already working. How can I make the machine see the new drive as non-removable? Thank you for any help you can give. Joan F. Roberts ps: I really get lots of good info from the free newsletters in my e-mail!

This question was answered on September 2, 1999. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.

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It seems that there is no good configuration of 4 IDE hard drives and an IDE CD-ROM (that is 5 drives only two cables, with two each, master and slave) This may be where you are running in to problems Your best option is to purchase a larger (10G) hard drive for a reasonable price and partition the drive

Also it is not good practice to place (IDE) CD-ROMs and IDE hard drive on the same cable CD-ROMs work on a slower PIO this will bring the drive speed down as well

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Posted by Ken Colburn of Data Doctors on September 2, 1999

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