Anyone had experience with long (rounded) IDE cables? (and a new system case!) (1 Viewer)

[Rob Gillespie]

I'm moving my main system into a new tower case (big-mutha Chieftec DA-01WD), but standard 450mm IDE cables wont reach from the mobo to the higher drive bays.
I've seen conflicting advice about the integrity of IDE cables longer than the standard 450mm and also about 'rounded' cables instead of 'flat'. I've ordered a pair of rounded 900mm cables which will be used for CD, CD-RW drives as well as UDMA33 HDs in removable bays.
Has anybody used this length of cable before and/or had any problems with them?

 

[Brian E]

I've rounded a few 36" cables (a bit over 900mm) and never had any problems with them. I've found that now I prefer to leave them flat and try and run them along the side of the case to keep them completely out of the way when possible.
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-Brian
http://www.brianeberling.com/collection.html

 

[Chris]

ATA spec only certifies cable of 18". Cable of 24" is common, and data loss is seen as low. Cable lengths of 36", however, tend to have a much higher chance of data loss and have created problems dependant upon the device. It's part of what hinders ATA (IDE) at this point.

 

[Rob Gillespie]

Well I'm pretty much set up with the new case. I'm just waiting on a delivery of ultra-quiet fans from QuietPC to finish it off.
I've run the Sandra HD benchmark on the 41gb drive in one of the removable bays and the scores are practically the same as with a standard length cable. Unless I actually notice something amiss I don't think I need be concerned.
The system now is:
Pentium III 600E with near-silent fan from QuietPC
Asus CUBX motherboard
384mb SDRAM
Matrox G400MAX graphics
Soundblaster Live! 1024 Player
Teac CD-540E CD-ROM
Plextor 121032 CD-RW
40gb IBM 60GXP HD
2 x 46gb IBM 75GXP HDs
2 removable HD bays
Chieftec DA-01WD case
QuietPC 300W Q-Technology power supply
2 x QuietPC near-silent case fans (to be added)
The case can carry six HDs internally, though I'm only using three of the slots. The slotsh have a holding mount for an 80mm fan. The drives now run very cool indeed, whereas before they were in the 40c range.
And yes, I have too much disk space