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I need help from someone who's knowledgable about assembling computers. I want to add a DVD-ROM drive to my computer but I already have a primary master, primary slave, secondary master and secondary slave plus the 3.5" floppy drive. 3 ribbon cables come out of my motherboard. One goes to the floppy drive. Another goes to my primary hard drive and CD burner. The last one goes to my second hard drive and 250mb Iomega Zip drive. Not only that but I already have two power multipliers hooked up to my 400 watt power supply and adding yet another one might be a bit much (my video card has the nerve to demand a power plug). Is there any way I can add another drive?

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FFXI (Siren server)
Tauu the Windurstian Tarutaru!
White Mage & Paladin

Not that I know of, short of buying a RAID-supporting motherboard. They have more IDE channels to support the whole RAID thing, but you can just turn it off and use them as normal channels, I believe. (Might as well get a new PSU while you're there, because 400W for all those drives and a high-end graphics card could be considered living dangerously, though if it's a top brand one like an Antec, it might work out).

Alternatively, you could look at a DVD+CDRW combo and replace the RW you have, or even a full on DVD burner, which are starting to drop to sensible prices. But no, there isn't a way to add more drives to your existing system that I know of.

Oh ok, thanks Tiddles. Maybe I'll disconnect the Zip drive and only use it when I need to, which isn't very often. The CD burner is brand new and I already bought the DVD drive too.

DVD burners may be coming down in price but DVD-Rs and DVD-RWs are still insanely expensive! A big pack of DVD-Rs is $150 (I forget how many exactly). A small pack is $30. Ouch. You'd better treat those things like gold and be darn careful what you burn onto them.

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FFXI (Siren server)
Tauu the Windurstian Tarutaru!
White Mage & Paladin

Quote (i90east @ 2nd May 2004 03:29)

Oh ok, thanks Tiddles. Maybe I'll disconnect the Zip drive and only use it when I need to, which isn't very often. The CD burner is brand new and I already bought the DVD drive too.

DVD burners may be coming down in price but DVD-Rs and DVD-RWs are still insanely expensive! A big pack of DVD-Rs is $150 (I forget how many exactly). A small pack is $30. Ouch. You'd better treat those things like gold and be darn careful what you burn onto them.

But since you can use a DVD-RW to burn CDs as well as read DVDs, I think you might understand what he's getting at.

But anyway, lose the ZIP. It's not worth it with the low cost of writable CD media these days. I disconnected mine over a year and a half ago and haven't missed it.

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