ide cable's. what's long enough?

[glockjs]

i wanna switch it so my hdd's are master on each channel and optical is slave but obviously the standard ide cable's aren't long enough. my main question is the 24" round cables going to be long enough(it looks like it would be close) or do i need the 36"? i have a mid tower. thanks

[budz]

The 24" should be fine but it depends on how close your hds and optical drives are to the mobo ide's. I've purchased 36" cables when I used my old plextor 40x cdrw that was hooked up to a pci controller card. The plextor was in the top slot of my antec case which was far from the pci controller card. Best is to purchase both lengths and see which one will work for you. Compusa will take the cables back if they don't fit. I'm not sure if Newegg does.

[glockjs]

probably just go the compusa route since newegg charges 5 bucks for shipping. thanks

[ViRaL1]

Round cables also don't need to be quite as long as flat cables because going around other objects like other cables doesn't require much bending.

[Capmaster]

ide cable's. what's long enough?

About one inch longer than what I have, it always seems :P

They're limited because of the speed tradeoff - the longer the cable, the more the parasitic capacitance and inductance degrade the signal and reduce the effective transfer rate. Most cables have a theoretical, and a practical maximum length. Those two numbers are usually different

The newer cables are better, like ViRaL1 mentioned. A lot of length is used up going around another cable or other obstruction.

[fmctm1sw]

[quote="Capmaster"]

the longer the cable, the more the parasitic capacitance and inductance degrade the signal and reduce the effective transfer rate.

I believe the IDE specification calls for a max of 18 inches.

[themichael]

I once saw some homemade IDE cables that were 6 foot long. The max recommended is 2 feet. The 2 foot limit for the high speed IDE cables has more to do with the really cheap wire than a standard.

the longer the cable, the more the parasitic capacitance and inductance degrade the signal

The 6 foot cables actually out preformed the flat cables. These were made from Cat 5e bundles. Drive cables only need 20 wires for signals, the rest of the cable is connected to ground.

If you use a larger wire (22-Cat 5e, 28-30 IDE) and sheild the signal wires better the longer the run can be.

[glockjs]

well if length is gonna effect performance maybe thats not the way to go. i have an extra tx2 ata133 card sittin around. maybe ill just put each drive on their own channel. hdd's on mobo, optical on controller card. or is that just a waste?

[ViRaL1]

I'd put HDDs on the cards, taking some load off the processor, and put the optical drives onboard.

[glockjs]

i didnt think of that. good idea. tonight im ordering a new asus a7v880 and a sata 200 gig seagate. so i think im gonna run my os off of the sata and it wouldnt be too bad to have the two extra storage drives on the controller card. thanks

[enstg8er]

some cards don't support optical drives. my promise tx2 does. i run my hdd's on the card and optical off the mobo.

[ViRaL1]

Did you go with NCQ or just standard SATA (or is there actually any difference between those two drives?)

[glockjs]

Did you go with NCQ or just standard SATA (or is there actually any difference between those two drives?)

i think nf4 is about the only amd that supports ncq im not ready to spend that type of money yet