Ok to cut an 80 pin cable to reduce length?

galt

Senior member
Jun 10, 2002
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I just got a 60 gb Maxtor hdd with serial# MX6L000J3, and the model number is D740X-6L . Anybody know if this has liquid bearings? And I want to make my case a little 'cleaner' (regarding the internal wiring). I'll be using the 18 inch cable that came with it. But the way I'll be installing the hard drive, it'll be only 4 inches from the ide port. I was wondering if I could just snip the cable just after the 'slave' or 'secondary' head (the grey one) and put the drive on it as a master. Anybody know if this would cause a problem?
 

galt

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Jun 10, 2002
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Well, turns out that the hard drive doesn't have liquid bearings. Still wondering about the cable though.
 

Bartman39

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Jul 4, 2000
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Not sure on the liquid bearings...?

You can do the "snip" as you say but why not just fold the cable down and use a cable tie or rubber band...? I did this long before rounded cables came into play... :D
 

Dreadogg

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Mar 1, 2001
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I have snipped the cable like you say and have had possitive and negative results, so I guess If you have extra cables and a drive benchmark program handy you can come to a strong conclusion!
 

galt

Senior member
Jun 10, 2002
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Dreadogg: "...have had possitive and negative results..."

I dont mind a marginal drop in speed, if thats the 'negative' results you got. But if you mean negative as in data corruption, then I definitely don't want to do that.
 

Jhhnn

IN MEMORIAM
Nov 11, 1999
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Having tried it myself, the only problem I encountered was that the cable was not detected as 80 wire, so the HDD operated in ata33 mode. Short cables are available from several vendors, I got some flat teflon insulated ones from Romtec.
 

zepper00

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Jul 1, 2002
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80-wire cables are supposed to be built as cable select cables though the CS lines are ignored if you set your drives to Master/Slave so they work fine in either mode. However, as another fellow mentioned, some lines might be used to determine if there is a drive on the end of the cable and not be detected as 80-wire if there is no drive there.
And it is never a wise move to have an open connector on the end of a cable--just a bad practice with any high frequency transmission cables. Better to buy a specifically designed short, one-drive cable as yet another fellow mentioned.
.bh.
 

Rhombuss

Golden Member
Nov 22, 2000
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Bartman probably has the best suggestion of folding them. ATA66 cables maintain their shape unlike ATA33 cables, so you can just fold it and it will stay. Snipping and re-soldering 80 wires is pretty crazy. It would probably be a lot easier for you to buy the IDE headers and make your own custom IDE cable. I couldn't imagine it taking much longer than modifying your existing one.