Maximum number of external hard drives?

I was wondering if anyone knew of any limits on the number of external hard drives a computer had. I always assumed it was only limited by the number of USB ports available on the machine.

I currently have 3 physical external drives, 1 partitioned into 2 separate logical drives. When I tried to add a 4th, I had no luck, but the moment I unplug any one of the others I have, the new one is detected immediately and with no issue. I'm running a Dell Optiplex GX520 with a 2.8 Ghz P4 processor.

It's driving me mad. In all, I have 1TB of storage externally and I've run out of space for my movies and music. I need to add this additional 500gig drive if I want to keep on track.

reply to post by Rasobasi420


You could probably find the limits in your 'System' applet in Control Panel, at least that's a place to start.

I think you've proved to yourself that your PC has a limit on what it recognizes.

My question is why would you need to have the drives connected all at the same time?

Just do a directory listing, save it as a text file and then using wordpad, search it to find which HD has the movie or song you want. Then find that HD and plug it in.

There are lots of utilities which could make a listing of your HD, including chkdsk in DOS. You could have the movies in a simple directory and just do dir >movies.txt at the DOS or CMD prompt.

Originally posted by Badge01

My question is why would you need to have the drives connected all at the same time?

Just do a directory listing, save it as a text file and then using wordpad, search it to find which HD has the movie or song you want. Then find that HD and plug it in.

There are lots of utilities which could make a listing of your HD, including chkdsk in DOS. You could have the movies in a simple directory and just do dir >movies.txt at the DOS or CMD prompt.

What this machine basically is, is a media server for my house. I have my X-Box connected to this desktop and I use it for watching downloaded shows on my TV, projector, or laptop. I'd prefer not to have to plug anything in if I want to watch something.

I guess I have met my limit. I guess it's time for another (meaning additional) media server.

I'm a computer dummy so forgive me if this is stupid...

But is not the computer limited only by the amount of drive letters?

I found this...

26 Drive Limit

Semper

That's what I thought too Semper. It might just be a limit on my motherboard. I have all of my drives connected to USB ports on the machine, and I tried to add the new HD via a USB hub.

The most aggravating thing is that when I plug in my iPod it's recognized as an additional drive, and dismounts one of my drives. Invariably, the drive I always automatically lose is the one that stores all of my music. It's a pain in the rectal region.

Hrmmm, could be the logical drives rather than Physical? Do you need to partition the one drive into two? Would it detect the whole drive if you made it back into one drive? A bit of mucking about - but i'm sure it will work.

On the other hand, it may be worth to consider sticking a huge drive internally. Will take a lot of the headaches away

Thx

reply to post by Im a Marty


I'd love to set some of my drives as internal, but the machine is a small form factor and there is no room for internal drives. I'd prefer not to have to repartition the drives. It would take forever to copy 500 GB of data to another drive.

I think I'll just get an additional PC if this keeps doing what it's doing.

are the external drives power by their own power supply or do they run off the usb port alone? i'm wondering if it's more of a power issue. there really shouldn't be any technical limit other than the drive letter issue (even then you can span volumes and such across multiple drives), but there may be physical limits - power, interface type, etc. i would also guess that even though you may have a zillion usb ports, many of them are probably sharing bandwidth, so it could just be an issue of too many devices on a root hub for it to keep track of. only thing i can think of is try adding a pci usb card and see if that helps. if not you could always take it back. but since it would add another usb controller it might give you some more expansion capability.

I am fairly disappointed in usb externals. Sure they work, but after using esata, I am sold.
I only have 2 IDE drives installed for holding game images, an esata 500 for backups, and a sata 750 for the os.
Considering the prices are cheap currently, I would consider purchasing a couple huge drives, rather than a bunch of smaller ones.

My board and box will hold 6 sata drives, and 3 esata externals.
The 750's aren't too pricey, but would love to pack it with 9 1 terrabyte drives.