I have 6 SCSI 36 gig and 1 ata133 30 gig with 500 watt pwr supply.
No problems as long as you have the power supply to back you up.

JJK

OK... this is a little nuts. I have the standard IDE master and secondary controller run off the motherboard. I've got a 120 GB drive and a DVD burner on the main and for the secondary like two removable drawer drives as master/slave, so in theory no limit. Then on top of that I put in a 2nd IDE controller card and have 4 more drives on it, two in the case, two more in drawers. All and all if I have too and can have a little over 750GB up and running. Yes that's extreme, and I got a giant server case with six bays accessible from the front, six fans and a 430 watt power supply.

Windows XP or ME or WIN 2000 even 98 should be able to support 8 devices easily.

You shouldn't have any problem.
I got 2 20Go and 4 80Go. I use a Promise PCI-IDE output for my 80Go's and run the 20Go from the board (plus CD burner and DVD player).

Watch Sunday advertising supplements in your paper. Currently, CompUSA, that wonderful Mexican company, is running ads for 200GB Maxtor drives, 8MB Cache, 1 year warranty, with a free ATA133 4-way HD Controller Card, for the IN STORE Only price of $199.95. This runs through this Saturday. Two weeks ago, it was the 120GB drives on sale. Both Western Digital and Maxtor ALWAYS seem to have something on sale at half price. Just depends on when you walk in as to what you find on sale. I'm waiting to see when the 250GB goes back on sale. Last time it, too, was $199.95, with the ATA133 card. Nice deal. Missed it. Waiting. NOTE: These are IN STORE Only prices. Not on their site.

From a practical point of view, Hard Drive space to a video editor is a little like closet space. You can NOT have too much space, by definition.

They also have a couple of nice case with 13 drive bays for $149.95. That ought to tell you something about the enthusiasts in the world. Nice BIG power supply and 3 fans in the case, NOT counting the one which goes on the CPU and the one in the power supply. Total of 5 fans.

Accepts just about ANY mother board, too.

Good luck.

Wow that would be the stuff. I just checked the website and there is no mention of it.

You're going to run into a wall with 24 drives (partitions). You have 26 letters in the alphabet, and A and B are reserved for floppy drives.

Actually there are 31 drive letters. After Z: comes [: \: ]: ^: and _:, although i'll admit i haven't tried to use them since my old DOS 3.3/Netware 2 days. There's probably something in Windows these days that prevents their use. Such a pity.

Gee, ls see here. 31 drives, minus A and B, leaves only 29.

Using the new Maxtor 5A300J0, at 300GB each, 29 times, that makes . . .

Amazing!

JJK

FWIW I'd be a bit careful re: some if not most of the cases that CompUSA sells. With the cheap ones you get what you pay for, and the expensive ones are a bit too much so for my tastes - look around online, & you might take a look at multi-drive enclosures which can simplify stuff an awful lot.

Also FWIW, if you have it you'll use it, if you don't you'll make do, & very seldom will any of us be 100% satisfied. :?b

mike