2007-03-14 18:38:03 · 9 answers · asked by Stever 2 in Computers & Internet ➔ Hardware ➔ Other - Hardware
Servers and mainframes can have hundreds, but I'll assume you mean a home PC.
It depends on your motherboard really, how many sata/ide plugs it has. If you have an older motherboard then you probably have no sata plugs and only 2 ide. Each ide supports up to 2 devices each, so you can have up to 4 devices in any combination of hard drives and CD/DVD drives. But there are also cards you can use that will add more sockets, both for sata and ide.
Another factor to consider is your power supply. Each hard drive dosent take that much power on its own, but add them up and power demands start to be large.
Personally I have 4 hard drives. I know someone online who has 7. I've seen motherboards that could support up to 12, but when you get that many powering them all will start to be an issue.
2007-03-14 19:03:05 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Basically it depends on Motherboard and OS. Most Desktop Motherboard have 2 IDE ports and 2-8 SATA port. which can support 4 IDE drive and 2-8 SATA Hard Drives. Also you can add addon controller cards to support more Hard Drives but it depends on OS that how many you can install.. Again your PC Power Supply should have the capacity to supply enough juice to run them.
Additionally you can add USB Hard Drives also.
2007-03-15 02:32:53 · answer #2 · answered by Ashik Murshed 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
In one PC you can have four. Using USB fan out capability, depending on the number of usb ports and PCI slots, you could get as many as 2000 to 3000 units attached to the hardware, but Windows can only use C: thru Z: , which is 24.
Drives can also attach to serial ports and parallel ports with special cables, but that is legacy and impractial.
If you need that much space, forget standard drives and buy a SAN unit.
2007-03-15 02:16:34 · answer #3 · answered by Happy Camper 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
In desktop pcs there will be two data cable sockets that support PATA hard drives with names HDD1 and HDD2. So we can have two data cables. Each data cable has two pins to connect to two drives. So we can connect 4 hard drives. But in the new mother boards there are two SATA hard drive sockets available to support SATA hard drives. We can connect 2 SATA hard drives using these two sockets. Totally 4 drives can be installed on a mother board that supports PATA hard drives and we can install 6 hard drives on a mother board that supports SATA hard drives also(4 PATA drives, 2 PATA drives). In the upcoming mother boards they are giving 4 SATA sockets to connect 4 SATA drives also.
2007-03-15 02:03:18 · answer #4 · answered by chiranjeevi k 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋
If you buy a fairly nice (and new) motherboard, you can have up to 10 total internal drives, assuming you have no optical drives (CD or DVD), and the motherboard has 6 SATA ports, which some now do.
2007-03-15 02:00:28 · answer #5 · answered by alchemist_n_tx 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
typically:
SCSI has greater expandability when compared to IDE and EIDE. SCSI is capable of supporting up to 7 or 15 devices. IDE / EIDE allows 2 two devices per channel. Most computers have 2 channels.
most non server computers have IDE/EIDE drives.
2007-03-15 01:55:00 · answer #6 · answered by Rob Conlin 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋
on a normal PC, (IDE connections) you can have up to 4, (thats with no CD drive, there are useually 4 IDE connections in a regular computer.
2007-03-15 01:56:21 · answer #7 · answered by ntlgnce 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Depends on the OS but several hundred probably at bot nets, reasearch labs ect.
2007-03-15 01:40:58 · answer #8 · answered by andrew_kerr100 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
4X 250GB in raid here.
(not max)
2007-03-15 02:05:46 · answer #9 · answered by INOA 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋