I would agree with that. though i definitely could use 10 hard drives with a 200GB+ capacity each. that would make sense, if you're going for insane amounts of storage, and have to stack up the biggest ones available on the market to get what you want. but to layer hard disks with 9 or 20 GB capacity, --- that's something i wouldn't want to do. why go through all the trouble. unless you're just doing it for the fun of it. i don't see that there is a limit to how many you can have; we just heard from yordan @ 1000+ drives. but in a single case, i would think theoretically at least that the number of hard disks would have to be proportionate to the cooling power of the system. i have 2 80 GB SATA hard disks, and the shop guy stuck them in slots right over each other. whenever i would do serious video editing, bam, the computer would freeze up because the hard disks didn't have any air circulating between them. as soon as i switched slots, no more problem.


yeah it could. if it gets too cold. i've heard of people cooling it waay down, but if the parts get too cold then they stick and don't work so well. i'm not sure what the limits are, but there's a minimum on the operating temperature range.

yes it is taking up a lot of voltage, but hey, with the server having two power supplies i am fine .... i am working on some other smaller servers to network to and troubleshoot computers...i just finished my unattend cd for xp (using nlite ) so that all my drivers and apps are automaticly loaded...baby...

I have 2 80 gigs in my setup, occasianally i stick another one in to put mai XBox games in.

Doesn't that make a lot of noise when accessing the drives ? I have a lot of old drives and they still tick hard when accessing and they make a sreeching noise (what do you except, ball bearing < fluid bearing), I even have a few drives that need active cooling on a chip before it works stable

But, there is practicaly no limit on the number of hard drives, but I don't think Windows ca

--oeps, pressed post button AND NO FREAKING EDIT BUTTON --
... can access more than 24 paritions (C: - Z: ), so that should be the limit.

no it actually doesnt make a lot of noise, and i believe you can download programs that will allow you to have more than that ammount of drives on there by assigning more drive letters (actually numbers or double letters or sumtin...i dont quite remember).

That amount of drives does sound pretty crazy...it's been suggested to reduce the drives and increase the size and I'd go for that.

Unless you have different data on each drive, in which case it would make sense to have all those different drives. Like, one drive for music files, one drive for backup, etc, that way when you go to access the drives you're only pulling specific data from specific drives and not creating a back up of the flow of data (which I guess isn't really a problem, ata/scsi still allow data to flow pretty quick).

I like hte idea of just networking a bunch of computers. If each computer has a pretty small case, and one or two drives in it, it works better in my mind, seperate cooling, seperate power, etc. Plus with giga-byte network capabilities it would be quick to access data as well, if that is an issue to people.

Unfortunately, this is not the tendancy today. Today, the tendancy is grouping blades in a single cabinet : 15 two-cpu machines in the same drawar, a single power supply, a single cooling system. And several cabinets in a single rack. So you will have 50 to 75 cpu's on a square meter...

Yeah I too believe That you Use Single hard disk If 160gb or so and make 8 partitions if you want ..! As thats better than wasting acess time and power..! i never saw someone use 8 hard disks ... its really crazy to think.! But its ok for servers to have multiple hard disks... If you use it for desktop Then just single hard disk is enough.!

Iam using two hard disks .Totaling 160gb {ie 80+80 gb}
and both have 2-2 partitions {virtually 4 hard disks}
I have noticed that sometimes my system goes slow On acessing another drive .. Im getting slow times in 2 drives god knows how is your system!

Nope ! If you have two disks, access time is usually divided by two (30 milliseconds on each disk instead of 30+30=60 milliseconds with a single disk).
So, having a lot of disks is great. The only question is if you want to pay the price of noise and electrical power for obtainint it.
Yordan