Can I add a third internal hard drive?

I have a G4 Quicksilver with the original 80 G drive, and a second internal hard drive of 100 G that I added to the Drive Position 3 slot several years ago.
I would like to add a third internal hard drive (video files, backup, and all that) using Drive Position 2. I have looked all over the web without a clear answer. Is it possible to add another ATA internal drive, or must I settle for an external drive via Firewire 800?

Well, I can explain what each option will do for you, but it all depends on what you need and what you are willing to spend.
The quickest and easiest option is to use the ATA-3 bus. If you are streaming video directly to the drive and need something fast, then I wouldn't recommend this. But if you are using it as storage for video files, then this would be fine. Basically the ATA-3 bus is not high performance and will show through to be a little slower, but for storage this isn't really an issue. It depends on what you are using it for...
The next easiest option would be to buy an external firewire drive. Since you already have the firewire 800 card, you may as well get one. Firewire 800 is pretty fast, boasting an 800 mbit/sec (or 66.6 MB/s) transfer speed. It will probably seem pretty similar in speed to the internal drives. The only drawback is that it is external...some people don't care about externals, but for me, I like it all internal. No fuss. But that's up to you. I had a firewire drive for a little while, but the enclosure failed in a year so I just pulled the drive out and mounted it internally. Runs a little faster now...
The last option would be to pull one of your PCI cards and get a ATA or SATA controller card. This is the most expensive option, but would probably be the highest performer. Drives hooked up to a controller card will seem a little faster, but for the most part will be pretty similar to your main ATA bus. The bus is not the problem and has never been the problem-the drives themselves are the bottleneck. Think about it this way: A drive has a peak transfer rate of 150 MB/sec (just for illustration.), and is connected to a bus that can transfer up to 300 MB/sec. How much speed will you gain if you move the drive over to a bus that can transfer up to 9,999,999,999,999 GB/sec? Haha. None! The bottleneck is the drive transfer speed, not the bus transfer speed. So the speed gains you will get from a controller card will be minimal, unless you get faster spinning drives (7,200, 10,000 or 15,000 RPM drives). The main way a controller card allows you to speed up transfer rates is by setting up a RAID. I doubt you want or need a RAID, and can cost a lot, so I won't go into that.
Just remember that the controller card is basically overkill if all you need is one extra drive. Either hook up a drive to the ATA-3 or go with an external firewire drive since you already have the firewire 800.

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