More than four ide drives?

I’ve spent the weekend converting seven systems from xen to kvm virtualizations. I’ve used the --import function of virt-install, and it converted the xvdm disks to /dev/hdx, and worked perfectly. All disks involved are loop images.

The last system had, for various reasons, seven virtualized disks, from xvda through xvdg. virt-install refused to create seven hdx disks, because four is the maximum.

Is there a way to have more than four ide disks? Or, is there a way to present these disks as something else? My initial attempt was to do this:

<disk type='file' device='disk'>
  <source file='/dg/xen-dg-disk1'/>
  <target dev='vda' bus='virtio'/>
</disk>

but when the guest was rebooted, there was no /dev/vdx device - so that didn’t work.

Suggestions, pointers, location of a FM for me TR appreciated…

– tim –