Poll: Building new puter.. H/D Cable Question

[Nickles36]

I'm building a new puter.. Last one I built was 3.5yrs ago ( P1@166 overclocked to 233 ) with no problems over the yrs. I'm now building a t-bird 800/kt7 MB with WD 20gig HD 7200rpm ATA/100 UDMA interface. My question is that the vendor I'm ordering the hardware from offers an special ATA66 H/D cable for $10, to take advantage of the ATA66/100 feature of the new H/D.. do I need a special cable or will the old EIDE cable that exists in my old system work?

 

[Deceiver]

You need a special 80pin cable to run in 66 or 100 mode. Most (don't know if all of them) new motherboards come with one of these cables. A normal ide cable will work for 33 mode.

 

[Shu8]

get the ata/66 cable. but if you bought the hard drive retail...it should already come with one. how much you spending on your hard drive. i would suggest the ibm 30gb 75gxp [ata/100] hard drive. it's quiet, fast, and reliable. you can get it for around 130 w/ coupon [if there still is one] from buy.com

edit: if you're buying your mobo retail...it should also come with an ata/66 cable because one came w/ my msi k7t pro2a mobo

 

[Whitedog]

And you can't take those 80 pin cables and round them, like so many here like to do. 😉

 

[Jeff H]

A couple of clarifications; I don't mean to stomp on anyone's toes <g>. First, the ATA66/100 cables are 80 wire/40 pin. Second, you can round ATA66/100 cables, just not the way it's typically done. It's difficult to separate the cable w/ a razor or X-acto blade. Those that round them over simply fold them and bundle w/ zip ties. And, there are vendors now selling round ATA66/100 cables, Plycon among them.