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Rounded IDE Cables Questions

P

Prince of Persia

Senior member
I'm building a new rig as some may already know.
It will include an ATA 100 drive, DVD, and a CDRW.

Now I've heard that rounded cables don't work properly with some devices. So I was wondering if I should still purchase them or if those problems are from home made cables?

What are the disadvantages of rounded cables, if any?

Will they work properly with my setup?
 


<< Now I've heard that rounded cables don't work properly with some devices >>


no problems to report on with mine!



<< Will they work properly with my setup? >>


should do! 🙂
 
Do yourself a favor and spend the extra money to get real, individually rounded IDE cables. Should be $12-$15 apiece. Stay far, far away from the $6 ones. They are nothing more than folded cables, with a big old piece of heatshrink tubing to shrink them down. They are slightly less flexible than a 6&quot; steel pipe. I have five. Would you like to buy some...cheeeep? 😉
 
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but rounded ATA66/100 cables can result in lower disk performance. The sole purpose of the extra 40 conductors on an ATA66/100 cable are to reduce interference on the cable. If you cut them up and twist them around, the lines can take too long to &quot;settle down&quot; in between cycles. The IDE controller will detect this interference, and possibly drop back to ATA-33 mode.

Here's a quote from the Western Digital ATA-66 White Paper


<< The 80-conductor cable retains the same connector configuration as the standard 40-pin interface cable but has ground lines interleaved between all signal lines. In other words, the 40 new lines are all ground (which act as shields) and no new signals are transfered. >>

 


<< I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but rounded ATA66/100 cables can result in lower disk performance. The sole purpose of the extra 40 conductors on an ATA66/100 cable are to reduce interference on the cable. If you cut them up and twist them around, the lines can take too long to &quot;settle down&quot; in between cycles. The IDE controller will detect this interference, and possibly drop back to ATA-33 mode.

Here's a quote from the Western Digital ATA-66 White Paper


<< The 80-conductor cable retains the same connector configuration as the standard 40-pin interface cable but has ground lines interleaved between all signal lines. In other words, the 40 new lines are all ground (which act as shields) and no new signals are transfered. >>

 >>



It has bean beaten to death. If you are a non-moron, and know how to properly round a cable, the difference between a flat cable and a hand-rounded one is on the order of .1% which could very much be due to experimental error.

READ up on rounding before you say it will or will not cause a speed hit or data erros. Then do some tests. I did.
 
This is far from an in-depth, scientific study conducted in a filtered-air, closed-loop environment...but my bedroom is good enough!

I ran SANDRA and HDTach a few times each, with regular IDE cables, elcheapo deluxe $6 folded &quot;round&quot; cables and real split rounded cables.

There's about a 5% drop in performance w/ the cheapo rounded cables, but no diff at all b/t the regular and split rounded cables.

I do understand the whole purpose of the extra 40 wires and also know how delicate they are. I have folded and zip tied the excess rounded cables, but was &quot;gentle&quot; about it. No probs here. My $.02.
 


<< Now I've heard that rounded cables don't work properly with some devices >>



i have no idea wtf you're talking about.
 
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