No. of harddisk connected

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pgcharlie

Posts: 56   +15
What is maximum number of hard disks (HDD and/or SATA) a system can support running XP for home pc?.. in performance wise, power wise, compatibility between hard drives, its effect on other I/O devices, brand wise, etc...
 
As many as you have drive letters, but really even more probably if you start RAIDing them.

There should be no compatibility issues, or branding issues, and power is limited only by the output and amount of connectors on your PSU.

About a week ago I had 5 physical hds a dvd drive, and a virtual dvd drive in my main PC (have since removed one physical hd). That used up (not counting A and B) through about M on my drive letters (drives had at least 1 partition each).
 
i was wondering and concerned too as to whether by connecting more number of devices of any kind onto a pc would eat up more power and whether smps would fail to provide that... would the devices end up getting damaged or start acting up weird you know.. insufficiency..since motherboard needs an exact amount of supply to function properly.. and if other devices eat up more power and smps fails to provide it then it could affect the motherboard functioning capabilities..
 
Maybe someone can post to further clairify because I'm not entirely sure on the power consumption on each rail (+12V and +5V), but the drives themselves will not use more than about 25W each, and that is on spin up. Under heavy load I don't think they use more than about 15W. The amount of power available is entirely dependent on your PSU and its quality. If you have a good PSU you'll likely be fine adding a few more hdds, how many more depends on your PSU.

What PSU do you have, and what type and how many drives are you wanting to add? If you could give more specifics I could give a better answer. Or maybe someone will show up with more details on HDD power consumption.
 
i m not exactly sure about PSU type of my system... what more specifics would you need... i m currently using 2 IDE (80+40)and 1 sata (500). how do i look up for PSU...
 
For PSU you have to open the case and see if you can read the sticker on the side of the power supply.
 
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