Is an ATA/66 cable really necessary?

[hotrod121]

I recently ordered a Maxtor Diamond Plus 40 ATA/100 7200 RPM hard drive to use with my ancient UDMA/33 motherboard...my question is this: do I really need an ATA/66 controller card? I know it will improve performance slightly, but frankly, in my situation, it doesn't matter all that much and I don't really care. On Maxtor's website, it states that you must have an ATA/66 cable to use the drive. Are they just saying that? Or do I really need it? I do have an ATA/66 cable, but it doesn't fit into my motherboard because one of the holes on the cable is plugged. I believe an ATA/33 cable should be fine because the only difference is the lack of extra grounding wires, but could that difference keep my drive from operating? Thanks for your feedback.

 

[Mday]

heh

the polarizing pin is preventing you from plugging... it has happened before...

you don't "need" the cable, but it's best if you do use it.

 

[toph99]

correct me if i'm wrong, but don't ata33's use 40 pints, and ata66/100 use 80?

 

[hotrod121]

thanx guys. i know it's better to use the ata/66 but i don't have the cash right now because of college to toph99: BOTH cables have the same number of pins (40)...the only difference is that ATA/66 cables have 80 wires...the extra wires are grounded and thus have no charge providing some space between the 40 wires that still send data. this decreases interference, allowing faster transfer rates. i guess i'll try the ata/33 cable when i get my drive, and if i have too many problems i'll go without food for a week and buy a controller card.

 

[toph99]

ahhh i see, thanx for clearin that up

 

[EvilDonnyboy]

I don't see why you'd need a ata66 cable at ata33. as for performance decrease, you'd lose a mb/s or two off the Maxtor's top speed, but it ain't bad. it rarely reaches top speed (something around 34mb/s) because it has to seek for all the bits and pieces of data.

 

[4824guy]

Going from ata 33 to getting ata66 performance is NOT noticable or worth the money in getting a ata66 PCI card, unless you need more ide connectors.

 

[Quickfingerz]

an ATA66 cable is required to run at ATA66 or ATA100.

 

[DaddyG]

Eat , and enjoy. Get the 66 cable. The extra ground wires help even at slower speeds. The signal is much cleaner, you might see better performance, less error retries. If I remember, IBMs site for storage products has some good info and shows some examples of how well the signals clean up.

 

[Howard]

<< the extra wires are grounded >>



Ground, not grounded.