What cable to use with ATA 100 drives

[peep0]

With the introduction of the ATA 100 hard drives I am confused on which IDE cable supports the increased speed. I see many companies bundling ATA 100 hard drives with the ATA 66 80-pin cables. Does this limit the transfer rate to 66mb/s? Is there a IDE cable that supports the full 100mb/s rate?
If anyone has insight into which cable to use or where to purchase please reply with the information.

Thanks.

 

[PistachioByAzul]

80-pin IDE cable supports "100mb/s" transfers, although there's basically no performance difference between ATA66 and ATA100.

 

[ragiepew]

the benefit of ata100 over ata66 is not seen today because of the inability of current IDE harddrives to max out even half of the ata66 bus. Current IDE drives sustain around 25-30 MB/s, far less than the 66 MB/s capability of the bus. Even two IDE drives on one channel have a hard time sustaining enough to fill the bus. When IDE drives start coming in at 10k rpm (anyone know when?), that's when ata100 potential will be realized... time will tell.. Anyway, to you question, you can use standard ata66 cables for ata100.

 

[DaddyG]

Thats 40-pin connector with 80 wire cable, just to clear up the point.
Extra 40 wires are connected to the same ground pin in the connector.

 

[Ulysses]

Contrary to what was mentioned above, there are IDE HDD's available today, like the IBM Deskstar 75GXP series, that can sustain transfers @ more than 33 MB/s.

The ATA/66 cables work with any of ATA/33, ATA/66 or ATA/100 drive and will enable the proper function if the other requirements for the function are enabled.

Note:
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Hard Drives: Setting up an ATA/66 or ATA/100 Hard Disk Drive

If you order a retail version of an ATA/100 or ATA/66 hard disk drive you get the drive, standard packaging, an instruction manual, and, usually, an 80-wire 40-pin IDE cable and a drive configuration and management utility on a floppy disk. If you order an OEM version usually you get just the drive. You may download from the manufacturer?s website the setup utility and instruction manual, however.

The 80-wire 40-pin IDE cable is compatible with ATA/33, ATA/66 or ATA/100 drives. The cables? blue connecter should be connected to the motherboard or to an add-in controller card. Usually the cables? black connecter (at the other end of the cable) goes to the master drive on that channel, and the cables? gray connecter (the one in the middle) goes to the slave drive. Of course, you need to properly set the jumpers on the drives to match their master or slave position.

To run the drive in ATA/100 or ATA/66 mode you may have to enable that feature on the drive with the setup utility, since drives when manufactured may be set to ATA/33 by default to insure maximum compatibility. You also must use an 80-wire cable for the drive to function at ATA/66 or ATA/100 and all drives on that cable must be ATA/66 or ATA/100. If you use a 40-wire cable, or if the drives are not properly enabled, then the drives will revert to ATA/33 mode. Finally, your motherboard or your add-in controller card must support ATA/66 or ATA/100 and must be so enabled, and your operating system must be enabled for DMA transfers.
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