Tek-Tips is the largest IT community on the Internet today!

Members share and learn making Tek-Tips Forums the best source of peer-reviewed technical information on the Internet!

  • Congratulations TouchToneTommy on being selected by the Tek-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

IDE Interface Cable 2

Status
Not open for further replies.

Amateur

Technical User
Jan 5, 2000
36
US
Is a special IDE interface cable nedeed for a UDMA 66 hard drive? What is the difference? Thanks.
 
Hi Dave, I just bought a Diamond Max Maxtor 13.6 G.The drive has an installation kit with a cable, which, according to the instruction MUST BE USED to install the disk. I misplaced the cable and wonders whether I can use a standard cable to install it. What would be the consequences, if the Maxtor were not used? Thanks.
 
HI ALL, AS FAR AS I AM AWARE MOST MOTHERBOARDS ARE FITTED WITH UDMA 33 IDE SLOTS, SO DRIVE THROUGHPUT IS IRRELEVANT<br>
I DONT KNOW WHETHER YOU WOULD GET LOSS ON A STANDARD CABLE<br>
I USE A PROMISE ULTRA 66 PCI CARD WHICH ALLOWS UDMA 66 DRIVES TO USE THEIR FULL THROUGHPUT BUT THIS REQUIRES A 80 WIRE 40 WAY IDE LEAD,ALSO THIS ALLOWS FOUR DEVICES ON THE CARD PLUS IT FREE'S UP YOUR IDE SLOTS ON YOUR MOTHERBOARD FOR OTHER DEVICES.THERE ARE MOTHERBOARDS AVAILABLE WITH<br>
UDMA 66 IDE SLOTS AVAILABLE NOW IF YOU ARE THINKING OF UPGRADING?? ALSO HAVE YOU BEEN TO YOUR DRIVE MANUFACTURERS<br>
SITE FOR MORE INFO ON YOUR DRIVE??<br>
HOPE THIS IS SOME HELP<br>
GOOD LUCK<br>

 
The HDD retail kits always include an IDE cable, but this is no different than what<br>
is supplied with your PC. No harm should<br>
become of your PC if you use another cable.
 
just make sure you NEVER use an IDE cable that is more than 18&quot; in lenght...i'm working on a solution to that prob. right now, but there's currently no escaping that barrier w/o causing data instability (BAD) <p>-Robherc<br><a href=mailto:robherc@netzero.net>robherc@netzero.net</a><br><a href= > </a><br>*nix installation & program collector/reseller. Contact me if you think you've got one that I don't :)
 
I can assure you that you do need to use a UDMA66 spec ribbon cable. I read an article recently that said the same. In Windows 9x go to device manager, double click on the HD Generic IDE Disk. This will load the propeties and the find the tab with a tick box for DMA. You will need to tick this box and reboot. However, be warned, this is not for the faint hearted, and the article warned againest doing this. Just to round up, you will not see any appreciable transfer/speed increase in going UDMA66.
 
Although you can use a standard 40-pin IDE cable on a DMA-66 drive/controller combination, to get the full performance increase you need a DMA-66 controller, a DMA-66 Hard Drive AND a DMA-66 IDE data cable. Although this cable looks just like a standard 40-pin IDE cable, cutting it up will reveal that each individual wire in the ribbon is actually paired, thus allowing the increased throughput. Some OEMs have different coloured plastic pin connectors to indicate the controller-, Master- and Slave-connectors but I have also seen onmarked cables.<br>
<br>
-Ian
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor

Back
Top