I wanted to know if there was a way to hook up more then 2 hard drives to my computer. What i do know is you can hook hard drives all 4 ports on the 2 cords (2 on one for the hard drives and 2 on one for the CD/DVD drives) i forgot what the cord is called. The reason i want to do this is cuz i have alot of diff hard drives and dont want to sell them for cheep. But i have to keep both of my hard drives in my computer use them alot, "what i im lookin for is a Cord that lets you hook up 3 to 4 drives on just 1 cord (3 to 4 ports on 1 cord??
Put them in external cases with their own ps using usb or firewire or even sata and plug them in. You can put just about all you want this way. By the way those cords are probably your ide.
you can buy pci controllers that will allow you to use more hard drives, as well. this will keep your standard ide ports open for optical drives.
What Auslander said is a good option I forgot about. I put an extra Ide controller in one of my computers for four extra ide drives or burners, that works very well. If you have an extra slot that's a good way to go.
External Cases that hook up USB or Fire Wire. I've got 2 internal a 500 gb, & 250gb. 5 External 2-500gb, 2-300gb, 1-80gb for my backup. All seem just as fast as the internal as far as transferring or burning from and to.
the ribbon cable can only have 2 drives connected, master/slave, and there are none which can have more. like said before, either get a pci card with more ide channels on it or get a hard drive enclosure. heres the one I have: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817146307