Do optical drives need an ATA 66/100/133 cable?

[Bulldog13]

I am short on the 80 wire ata100 cables at my home. Can I use an old 40 wire cable on a dvd-rom and a dvd+rw and not take a performance hit? I read somewhere that optical drivers, wether reading or writing never surpass ATA33 speeds? Or do they need ata100?

Thanks

 

[aman74]

Yeah, I don't believe that an optical drive comes anywhere near using that kind of bandwith, not like a hard drive at all, so you should be fine, in fact my brand new 52x drive came with a standard 40 cable.

 

[LuDaCriS66]

Some optical drives won't even work with higher bandwidth cables

 

[Alkali]

None of these drives need any high performance cable. The most you can pull over one wire is about 25MB/s with two drives.

80-wire is always a good idea because it is used to provide grounding for each and every pin, meaning less electrical interference.

 

[Eug]

I almost always use the 40s for optical drives unless a hard drive is on the same cable. (I have a bazillion 40s lying around.) I've never had a problem.

 

[McMadman]

I think there was only one drive on the market that actually boasted ATA66, but the majority of optical devices are just ATA33 or simply PIO4.

I'd use the 80 wire cable if you had spares, but there will be no performance loss from using older 40 wires.

 

[ElFenix]

Originally posted by: Alkali
None of these drives need any high performance cable. The most you can pull over one wire is about 25MB/s with two drives.

80-wire is always a good idea because it is used to provide grounding for each and every pin, meaning less electrical interference.

i thought the extra wires just absorbed EM radiation to prevent crosstalk

 

[Alkali]

Originally posted by: ElFenix

Originally posted by: Alkali
None of these drives need any high performance cable. The most you can pull over one wire is about 25MB/s with two drives.

80-wire is always a good idea because it is used to provide grounding for each and every pin, meaning less electrical interference.

i thought the extra wires just absorbed EM radiation to prevent crosstalk

My apologies if I am wrong. I will look into this in more detail.