Question about DVD drive IDE ribbon cable...

[DVantrease]

Hope this isn't a dumb question (I'm not a hardware man). If my DVD drive says it supports UDMA/66, do I need a special type IDE cable to utilize this?

The reason I'm asking, I'm trying to determine why my supposed 8X Raite DVD drive will only rip at 2X. I have WinXP and have DMA enabled ('Use DMA when available'). I'm using the IDE cable that came with the drive, but wondering if using a different/better cable would help. I'm thinking along the lines of a 40-pin vs 80-pin IDE ribbon cable, but again I'm guessing here.

[DVantrease]

Ok, I think I did find the answer... I do need an 80-wire IDE ribbon cable to get the maximum speed white ripping from my UDMA/66 DVD driver. Ok, another question then. I have 2 CD drives off one IDE interface, HP CD-Writer+ 8100 (CD-R) and Raite 108H (DVD). The CD-R is mastrer, and DVD is slave. I read that the DVD drive is UDMA/66, but I cannot find ANY information on the HP CD-R (it's old, only 4x writer). IF the CD-R does NOT support UDMA, does this mean that it will do me no good at all to upgrade the cable to 80-pin, I mean the DVD drive won't gain any speed, since the NON-UDMA CD-R drive will basically slow it down? In other words, if I keep both drives together, the only way I can speed up my DVD is to replace the CD-R to an UDMA model? Is this correct?

[jonhildrum]

No, it is not correct. In the old days this was the case. However, for the last few years the controllers handles each drive separately. Thus, if you have a computer (motherboard ) that is fairly recent -later part of the 90's and on then there is no problem.

Of course, there would be a problem if you were trying to transfer data from the CD-R to the DVD. However, that problem would remain whether it is on the same cable or not.