I have a CD-RW, and three (3) hard drives.  The CD-RW is master, and
1st hard drive is slave: Drive 2 is secondary master, and the 3rd
drive is secondary slave.  I need to add a 4th hard drive.  What is
the best way to handle this?  Thank you

Hi securityman-ga,

The best way to add a fifth IDE device to you system is to use an IDE
RAID controller. Essentially, this is a PCI card that "splits" the
badnwidth of the PCI-bus, using one IDE connector on the motherboard
and providing two IDE connectors for devices. Since RAID is only for
hard drives, I would suggest to do the following:

1. Install your fourth hard drive (I'm assuming you have space in your
box)
2. Unplug the from the motherboard a ribbon that connects one of your
hard drives.
3. Insert your new PCI Card into a free PCI slot
4. Attach a ribbon between the motherboard and the card
5. Connect both your new hard drive and the drive you unplugged into
the IDE connectors located on your PCI card.

An example of the device you need to do this is at the link below:

http://www6.tomshardware.com/storage/20000329/fastrak66-03.html

Using the low price finder on this site, 9 matches were returned for
this device. Prices are all in the $50 range:

http://tomshardware.bizrate.com/marketplace/product_info/overview/index__cat_id--466,prod_id--5172840,de_id--200,name--Promise%20FastTrak%2066.html

Hope that answers your question :)

Cheers!

answerguru-ga