Can you use an 40-pin ATA33 cable on an ATA100 hard drive?

[Biggs]

Motherborad: MSI K7T Pro2A
Primary Master: Seagate UDMA33
Secondary Master: Sony 48x CDROM
*Both are using the older 40-pin IDE cable.

Question: Can I put an IBM Deskstar 75GXP ATA100 on Primary Slave using the other end of the 40-pin IDE cable connected to the Seagate ATA33?

 

[jaybert]

sure you can..you just wont get ata100 performance. Get a ata100 cable (80pin) and then hook up both drives to that. The cable is backwards compatible

 

[LukFilm]

What he said

 

[goodoptics]

jaybert said it all

 

[Jiggz]

Jaybert said it all. But personally I'll connect the IBM as Primary master by itself with a 80 wire cable and the other two on the secondary with a 40 wire cable. This way you'll have a max performaing IBM.

 

[ROJAS]

You can use the 80 pin ata66 cable, they are the same as ata100.

Ata100 will just cost you more.

 

[Biggs]

Ahhh, thanks for the inputs people.
Just one question, is it ok to use the 80-pin cable for an older ATA33 hard drive like the Seagate? I know the newer ATA100 drives are backwards compatible but does this apply to the ATA66/100 IDE cable too? I'm kinda sure I've read somewhere that it's not advisable to plug in an 80-pin cable on an ATA33 drive because this might cause problems.

 

[LXi]

I think you actually CAN get ATA100 when mixing with ATA33, because ATA100 controllers have independent channels so the slower drive wont slow down the faster one.

 

[jamarno]

An 80-wire cable can be used with any IDE device because the extra 40 wires are just grounds. Actually, if you need a cable longer than 18" for ATA/33 or slower, the 80-wire type probably keeps the signals much cleaner (but not as clean as a twisted-pair cable will).