DVD+RW IDE cable question

[vicarious george]

I just installed a 4X DVD+RW burner in a friend's computer. All he had was an ATA66 (32pin...I think) IDE cable. It burns CD's fine, but we haven't tried burning DVD's yet. (buying DVD X Copy today). Do I need to install an ATA133 rated IDE cable?

Thanks in advance
John

There are 40-wire and 80-wire cables, each has 40-pins. If it's ATA66 rated as you say, then it should be 80-wire and that is also ATA100 and ATA133 rated.

[vicarious george]

Not ATA66, it's ATA33. (40pin)
It has noticibly less wires than the HDD IDE cable.

Will it work?

It will work, but only at ATA33 standards. Use it w/o fear.

[vicarious george]

Tried ripping a dvd. It is taking about 3hr. instead of one. Is that because of the cable?

Mmm, I think that should be normal. You're only getting a burst of 33MB/s instead of 66,100, or 133, whatever your drive's max is. The actual ripping speed is gonna be based on what the read speed of the drive is, not the throughput. I doubt if the laser rips at 33MB/s.

What model DVD+RW is it?

[John Prophet]

you dont need the 80wire cable for dvd or cd drives, or burners.

They dont reach ata100 speeds anyway.

Besides, if it needed that cable it would come with it, lol. And they only come with 40 wire cables.

Also the bios would give you the warning about no 80 wire cable being present etc.

Its burning slow for some other reason.


That being said...some people claim 80's are better anyway because they help prevent data corruption from crosstalk....so if you have extra 80's..use em.

JP

[Bovon]

I'll weigh in on this one with an opinion too.

The burner will probably work just fine with either cable, 40 or 80 pin...however, since the main reason for the 80 pin cable (to actually reach the ATA133 speeds) is to reduce cross talk (thats all), it stands to reason that those same 80 wire cables would benefit any data writer because of cross talk elimination..

[vicarious george]

Thanks guys,

As it turns out, the cable works fine. I was at work while my friend tried to rip the DVD. I was not in front of his computer, so I couldn't see that he was also allowing the DVD to play in WinDVD, (thus the 3 hr. real-time speed). I just built this computer for him and he is not very tech savy at all.

Good to go,

Thanks,
John