I have only been registered a few days and have asked a lot of questions already, but my next one is rounded IDE cables?

I was told that they are not as efficient as Straight IDE but I bought them originally to assist in case temperatures. I have had no problems with them but wanted to know if this is this true or not?

Thanks

Excellent question...

I don't have a link handy to an authority on the subject. What I remember from previous discussions on the subject is that the original 40 wire IDEs were prone to "cross-talking" (e.g., over lapping sparkplug wires in a vehicle could sometimes transfer a partial charge to an unintended cylinder). This would result in data corruption.

The 80 wire IDEs added a ground wire for each of the original 40...now, my theory on this would be that had they needed to provided "space" between the original wires, they could have simply beefed up the insulation.

It would appear that the addition of a ground wire was sufficient...so, to group them together in the round cable would be a moot point.

They are definitely easy to work with in a case and air flow certainly is improved not having to deal with the plastic "walls" presented by the flat IDEs... ;)

That is exactly what I was thinking, if 80pin cables had the additional 40 cables for "non-interference" then you could assume that the twisted cables will interfere no end (unless they have somehow been insulated)

I was ok with them until I heard someone mention this, now its bugging me!

Cheers. :)

I was told that they are not as efficient as Straight IDE If they are working fine for you with no problems, and helping with better air flow, then I would say they're quite "efficient". :p

I've been using them in a couple of my rigs for quite some time...(I think it was malcore who first brought them to my attention).

Is there anything in particular that leads you to believe they aren't working "efficiently"???

I think they're great. If they work fine...don't worry, be happy! ;)

this is what is bothering me:

http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=29615

not sure if the stats are ok or not?

Those HDTach bench scores for an IDE hard drive are actually quite good. I score a little lower with my Western Digital 80Gig 7200rpm hard drives.

I also have two machines with Western Digital Raptors, SATA drives, 10000rpm set up in a RAID0 array. One rig using the 36Gig Raptors benches at about 90MB/s on HDTach. The other with 74Gig Raptors benches around 100MB/s on HDTach, about twice the speed of your or my IDE drives. Just about right.;)

If the round cables were faulty, you would be experiencing other and more serious problems than slow read speeds. You aren't even experiencing slow read speeds though.

A well constructed round cable is much superior to a ribbon cable.


I like them SATA cables a whole bunch more though.:p

Thanks for that, I havent used hdtach much before so needed an experienced user.

Im glad the scores seem ok.

Thanks again. :)

Conclusion: Rounded cables work ;)