How many internal hard disk drives can I install in my HP Pavilion 7955?

Question

Assuming I have the available space, how many internal IDE hard drives can I install in my computer? What will each be called if I have 3 total (one primary and two secondary's) and how should the jumper switches be set? Is this common practice and is it advisable? If not, why not?

I currently have 2 IDE internal HDD's plus 1 CD-Writer and 1 DVD Writer.

Would 1 additional HDD's overload my small 200 watt PSU?

Answer 1

Ok this will depend on a couple of things, how many CD or DVD drives do you have??

IDE support 4 devices in Total
Channel 0 - Master
Channel 0 - Slave
Channel 1 - Master
Channel 1 - Slave

If you have Serial ATA, then you can support 2 more drives

(These can also be RAID 0 or RAID 1)

So you can have 2 IDE Masters (1 on each channel) and 2 IDE slaves ( 1 on each channel)

The OS will take care of naming them, if you have 4 devices then they will become (normally) C: D: E: F:, any card readers will follow on G: H: etc, and Network drives will count down from Z: Y: etc.

Answer 2

well mbd's have two ide channels and each channel can hold two ide devices which equals four ide devices. Usually ide1 is for a primary hard drive and a secondary. Ide2 is usually your cdroms but they can be hard drives also. If you slave a hard drive off you cdrom the read time on that drive will be somewhat slow though. In my system I have added a promise card which just plugs into a pci slot and adds two more channels and they probably run 20 bucks. Now I have four ide channels and a possibility of eight ide devices even though I have never tried more than four hard drives and two cdroms on this setup it works very well other than the lack of space to put the hard drives. I just let them sit in the bottom of the case and all is well, hope this helps

Answer 3

IDE cannot have two secondary's. You would have 2 primary/secondary setups.

In your case 1 primary/secondary, and the second would be 1 primary.

Generally you can have 4 HD's with IDE.

Answer 4

i haven't worked on that comp so i could no longer tell u any specifics. and in case you by no ability replaced or put in a clean perplexing stress, then in simple terms take it to 'geeksquad'. putting it in is the straightforward area yet installation it suited will screw up your comp. perplexing drives are available in in simple terms few sizes and on condition that its hp you ought to probable extra healthful something in there. in case you do it your self which i do no longer advise...confirm the stress is well suited with your ability source. whilst u set up a clean stress u will additionally could elect which you would be able to truly be your ordinary and secondary stress....it gets complicated in case you by no ability executed it befo.