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Will Longer HD IDE cable reduce performance?

S

sillious

Member

If I use 18" or longer IDE ATA100/133 rated round cable for a hard drive as oppose to normal length 12" round cable, will it reduce the data transfer rate or degrade HD performance anyway?

Thanks.
 
18" is the longest I would go. Above that it really depends on the hard drive and usage but I have seen I/O errors with 24" and 30" drive cables with my old file server. Some drives they worked great others corrupted the hard drives.
 
Affect speed? No, the dif between 12 inch and 18 inch is nothing when something (data) is moving at the speed of light. However go too long and you may run into problems, but i never have
 

Thanks for all your input.

The longest I have is 18" (for CD-ROM).
I was going to re-arrange my hard drives position for better air flow inside my Lian-Li server case, as it has room. But due to cable length, I guess I'll have to keep them closer to the mobo's IDE port.

Thanks again.
 
I had an adaptec controller that automatically reduce the speed on the wire it senses. Ie some mobo will warn you that you have 40 pin wires and not 80 pin.

The super long wired I had, the speed dropped to ata/33, but some controller dont care
 
Originally posted by: GrammatonJP
I had an adaptec controller that automatically reduce the speed on the wire it senses. Ie some mobo will warn you that you have 40 pin wires and not 80 pin.

The super long wired I had, the speed dropped to ata/33, but some controller dont care
Click to expand...

In the beginning I used an HD enclosure for one drive I used to hot swap. Recently I took it off as I don't need to hot swap anymore and set the drive by itself. Now I see a huge difference in data transfer rate. The drive is (and was) set as slave, it also somewhat effected the data trandfer rate of the master ide.

I will never use another hot swapable ide enclosure again.

 
Originally posted by: sillious
Originally posted by: rod
18" should be okay. Is it 80-pin rather than 40-pin?
RoD
Click to expand...
Good question, I forgot and am at work. All the cable I used are round UV cables.
Click to expand...

Does it say it is ATA-133? I think all ATA-133 cables must have 80-pins/(conductors?)...

RoD
 
Originally posted by: rod
Originally posted by: sillious
Originally posted by: rod
18" should be okay. Is it 80-pin rather than 40-pin?
RoD
Click to expand...
Good question, I forgot and am at work. All the cable I used are round UV cables.
Click to expand...

Does it say it is ATA-133? I think all ATA-133 cables must have 80-pins/(conductors?)...

RoD
Click to expand...

Yes, it has label that says ATA100/133
 
Originally posted by: RadiclDreamer
Affect speed? No, the dif between 12 inch and 18 inch is nothing when something (data) is moving at the speed of light.
Click to expand...

Not quite true, but you need to go back "a few" years to see it in action. Try looking at older mainframes - you'll see wires that were several feet long even though the distance between parts was only a few inches. 😉

Hmm.. I'm dating myself a bit here, but the old-timers will remember. 😎
 
the end connector is still 40 pin but the wires on the cable is 80 and its smaller than the 40 condutor cable , this is the 40pin 80 conductor(wire) cable

the wires are doubled in the cable to prevent interference when the speed is 100 to 133
 
I've used 24" with no problems on my optical drives. Maybe the error correction slowed things down but I never noticed. I wouldn't use anything longer than 18" on HDs.

Funny thing is 3Ware sells 36 inch cables.
 
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