Nigel Henry wrote:
Sorry for the delay in asking this, but what is the difference between using
40 pin 40 wire, and 40 pin 80 wire IDE cables?
I ask because on one of my machines I have a fixed harddrive, and also a
harddrive caddy that uses one of the 5 ¼ slots, and is where I plug my
various drives in, that have various multiboot installs on them. With a
standard 80 wire ribbon cable it's impossible to connect both drives, so I
used the end connector for the fixed data drive, and used an extension cable
from the middle connector to reach the harddrive caddy. The only extension
cables I could find were 40 wire ones. I started to notice that there were
some bootup problems showing up, when booting some distros, so changed the
cables over, so that the 80 wire end connection was now connected to the
harddrive caddy that dealt with the OS's, and the 40 wire extension was
connected to the fixed data drive.
This has resolved the bootup problems I was seeing.
As far as I understand this, an 80 wire cable with alternate wires grounded
physically separates the wires carrying data, and results in a better data
transfer to or from the harddrive. Please correct me if I'm wrong here.
That's correct - the extra wires are just grounds to prevent crosstalk
at the speeds faster than the old 30Mhz speed that worked ok on 40 wires.
I've tried to find 80 wire extension cables without success. Anyone living in
France know where I can find them?
No, but if you are looking to replace the setup, there are some nifty
trayless SATA cages around that let you hot-swap bare drives.
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
