ATA 133 & 80-Conductor Cables

[tinkertech]

What are the shortcomings to using a standard 40-conductor ribbon cable on ATA 133 Devices? What do I gain by using and 80-conductor ribbon cable with an ATA MO and Devices? Thanks.

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[jurgen36]

You will only use the drive as an ATA33 if you use a 40 condutor cable. Some of the more modern drives will actually refuse to work. With an 80 cond. cable you will get the full transfer rate. The difference is about from 6 Mbytes a sec to 32-42 depending on the drive. Regards

Jurgen

 

[AckNack]

You slow your drive down to ATA 33 if you use 40 conductor cables.

Also regarding 80-conductor IDE cables.
These cables will have three connectors for drives. From the center connector picture this: the center connector is slightly off center. There is a "long end" and a "short end" to each of the end connectors.

The long end must be connected to the motherboard. The short end must be connected to the master or single drive. The center connector must be connected to the slave drive (if it exists).

The cables may or may not work if they aren't connected this way, but your drives will be slowed down to ATA 33 speed, even if you have a faster ATA 66, ATA 100, or ATA 133 drive connected to the cable.

AckNack

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[tinkertech]

Thanks guys; the shorts and still the fullest most to-the-point answer ever received.

For every problem there is a solution, for every solution there is a tech behind it.

 

[cdogg]

The main reason why newer drives will refuse to work any faster than ATA/33 on a 40-conductor cable is to avoid interference. An 80-conductor has the necessary shielding to prevent data loss and corruption during high-speed transfers.

Technically, you can use a 40-wire cable for speeds up to ATA/100. However, the risk of data corruption is much, much higher. That's why newer drives default to ATA/33.


Though this is off-topic, I would disagree that the benefit is a mere 5-7 MB/s. Average transfer rates over ATA/33 on faster drives is closer to 20MB/s due to overhead and LOW peak speeds. Over ATA/100, you can easily average over 40MB/s with peak burst rates getting as high as 85MB/s. That's not even in a RAID configuration.


~cdogg
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[edfair]

Your motherboard should have a different color shell for the faster device and the ribbon cable may have different color ID headers, usually blue for the M/B, gray for the slave, and black for the master, even though it is more likely you'll use cable select.

Ed Fair
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