40 or 80 pin IDE cables for my HDD and CD drives?

[Epsil0n00]

So, what's the diff. between 40 and 80 pin IDE cables and which ones should I use for my HDD and CD-RW/DVD drives?

Also, there's a big controversy whether round IDE cables are reliable or not... what do you think?

Thanks for the info!
Epsil0n

 

[spanky]

aren't 80pin cables for ata100 hd's? thats what i thought...

 

[Pariah]

All IDE cables are 40pin. UDMA cables are 80wire. The additional 40 wires are ground wires which help to keep the signal cleaner. You should always use 80 wire cables if you have an UDMA controller regardless of what's attached to it.

 

[VBboy]

Using a 40-wire (ATA-33) cable with an ATA-66 or newer HD/controller is very likely to cause data corruption.

Note that CD-ROM drives do not require anything better than a good old 40-wire ATA-33 cable. As for hard drives, I agree with Pariah.

 

[Epsil0n00]

DO most new mobo's with the KT266A chipset on them have UDMA controllers that would require the use of 80 pin cables? I am going to be using an Abit KR7-RAID or an MSI K7T266 PROA RAID with an IBM 60GXP deskstar HDD. What do I need for this setup? THanks again!

Epsil-n

 

[JohnnyPC]

<< Using a 40-wire (ATA-33) cable with an ATA-66 or newer HD/controller is very likely to cause data corruption. >>



Using a 40 wire on a ATA66 or greater controller will cause the controller to default to no faster than ATA33...depending on your controller and it bios, you even get an error message to this effect...

 

[Jiggz]

Using a 40 or 80 wire cable depends on the unit your connecting. For HDD ATA-66/100 use the 80 wire cable. For CD-Rom, DVD and CD-RW use the standard 40 wire cables. Would it hurt if you decided to use the 80 wire on a CD-Rom, CD-RW or DVD? Nope.

 

[bacillus]

<< Would it hurt if you decided to use the 80 wire on a CD-Rom, CD-RW or DVD? Nope. >>


I use an ata100 cable withe all my ide devices regardless of whether they're ata33/66/100!

 

[corkyg]

One other point to keep in mind . . . UDMA 80-wire cables are also Cable Select capable, and you can set the device jumpers to CS and the connector will determine Master or Slave automatically. Gray is Slave and black is Master. Blue goes in the controller socket.

40 wire cables have to be specially modified in order for them to use CSel. I still use them because when I use 80 wire cables, I lose my desktop animations. There is never any data loss.

 

[redhatlinux]

Forget the old 40 wire cables, use 80 wire for everything. Even on slower devices, the signals are cleaner due to the extra ground wires. As posted earlier, you should experience no data loss with 40 wire cables, just slower data transfer.

 

[4824guy]

If possible, use 80 conductors cables . They are shielded better so they provide a cleaner digital data transmission.

 

[Epsil0n00]

Where can I get 80 pin cables? All the cables at Newegg seem to be 40 pin.