IDE/EIDE Question

booj · 01-29-2004, 07:48 AM

Hi All,

I ve just bought a new 80 wire/40 pin cable to connect my two drives (CD-RW and DVD-RW). I only had one 40 pin cable connecting one of the drives previously.

What is the difference between the 40 wire and the 80 wire (apart from number of wires!).

Would my new DVD-RW work more efficiently with the new cable? I was having trouble writing data DVDs with the old one and thought it may be a compatibility issue.

Does it matter which connector is on the master, and on the slave (i know the blue one is for the MB0.

Thanks for any advice, guys n gals

jmichna · 01-29-2004, 07:59 AM

The 80-wire (but still 40-pin connector!) cable supports ATA-66 and faster. I recall reading that the increased number of wires reduce "signal noise" allowing for shorter data "chunks" being sent, so more "chucnks" of data can be sent in the same period of time (my paraphrasing may be way off).

The 80-wire cable won't do anything for an ATA-33 device. The 80-wire cable also won't do anything if your motherboard only supports ATA-33 devices and is not manufactured to the ATA-66 (or faster) standard.

If you have ATA-66 hardware and motherboard, and have been running ATA-33 (40-wire) cable, then the new cable should provide a performance increase.

You may need to check settings in Windows Device Manager to make sure your devices are running at the correct speeds.

Uncle Bob · 01-29-2004, 08:46 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by booj
Hi All,

I ve just bought a new 80 wire/40 pin cable to connect my two drives (CD-RW and DVD-RW). I only had one 40 pin cable connecting one of the drives previously.

What is the difference between the 40 wire and the 80 wire (apart from number of wires!).

Would my new DVD-RW work more efficiently with the new cable? I was having trouble writing data DVDs with the old one and thought it may be a compatibility issue.

Does it matter which connector is on the master, and on the slave (i know the blue one is for the MB0.

Thanks for any advice, guys n gals

I think the CD-RW would work on either a 40 or 80 wire cable. At
one time I had a DVD-ROM and a DVD-RW the instructions required an 80 wire cable for the DVD-RW

JohnE. · 01-29-2004, 09:02 AM

The extra wires in an 80-pin cable reduce crosstalk and provide some measure of reduction in data transmission errors (or something close to that description anyways). Even ATA33 devices will benefit from reduced crosstalk. The ATA specification at the time actually recommended 80-pin cables for ATA33 but it was not made mandatory like it is with ATA66 and higher.

I think it's Blue to Motherboard, Black to Primary Master and Grey to Secondary Master... at least that's the recommended setup.

booj · 01-29-2004, 09:06 AM

Cheers pal,

what if both connectors are black? is the one at the very end the recommended for the master?

01-29-2004, 09:12 AM

You should notice that the Master/Slave connectors are closer together. The Master is always on the end and Slave is always in the middle.

booj · 01-29-2004, 09:15 AM

This forum is great guys!

So can you damge the cable by having the master on the middle connector?

Also, someone told me that on the 80 wire cable, you can put the jumpers on both drives to cable select...is there any truth in this?

bailey · 01-29-2004, 10:40 AM

you cannot damage the cable.
hard drives should be set to cable select.
optical drives should use the 40 wire cable and the standard M/S jumper settings.
but will work eather way.

01-29-2004, 10:44 AM

The only way you could probably damage the cable is by trying to force it incorrectly, even then, you'll probably damage the drive and not the cable.

Always remember, the red (colored) stripe goes closest to the power connector.

As for the CS/M/S, I always manually set them to M/S and put them anywhere on the cable I want. The positioning on the cable doesn't matter if you use the M/S jumper.

JohnE. · 01-29-2004, 05:37 PM

You may have noticed most new ATA66 or higher drives come with the jumpers on Cable Select by default. Hard drive manufacturers anticipate buyers will be using an 80-conductor cable and this is the recommended arrangement. I'm not sure about other manufacturers but all my Maxtor drives have been this way out of the bag.

All my systems use 80-conductor cables and Cable Select for all IDE devices, including ATA33 optical drives (CD-ROM, CD-RW, DVD, etc). The 40 extra ground wires act as a sheild for the other 40 (data) wires, reducing crosstalk, which reduces data transmission errors and is beneficial to all IDE devices, and especially to CD/DVD burners. With 80-conductor cables being so cheap it's an easy system tweak

I posted a link to a very good article about this subject in another IDE thread... I'll see if I can find it again and put it here. Found it: IDE/ATA Configuration and Cabling