Are 80 conductor cables really better than 40 conducter cables? Or is this just a gimmick? Windows 2000 Professional SP4 Intel PIII 733 256k Coppermine / 144MB pc100RAM Coming soon hopefully AMD Athlon XP 2500-2800 512MB PC2700 RAM

The purpose of the extra wires is to cancel crosstalk. I don't believe that your drives can run faster than ATA33 standards without the 80 wire cable. There are some shielded round cables on the market that I think are even better. It should be noted that all round cables aren't shielded. It must be stated in the specs.

What OtheHill is correct. If for example, you had an ATA100 or ATA133 HDD & installed it using a 40-wire IDE cable, it would only run at ATA33. Normally, you'll get a warning at bootup about the improper cable. Asus A7N8X-X 1800+ @8x210mhz 512mb PC3200 Ti4200/8X 128mb WDC 60GB

The problem is that the cables start to interfere with it's neighbours if the frequency gets too high. Because of that the 80 conductor cables have been developed. The just have an additionally unconnected cable between each two connected that shield them from the interference. You need those cables if you want to run ATA66, ATA100 or ATA133 at full speed because without them you're automatically switched back to ATA33. But with your old system check first if your IDE controllers even support anything above ATA33 (or DMA33 or Ultra DMA or just simple DMA). If the board doesn't support ATA66 or above you don't need the new cables. If both board and harddrive support ATA66 or higher your harddrive may run faster. But this also depends on your system configuration. As an example, if you have an optical drive connected to the same cable as your harddrive that may slow you down because nearly all of them run at ATA33 and those older controllers just switch to the slowest speed of the connected devices!

"if you have an optical drive connected to the same cable as your harddrive that may slow you down because nearly all of them run at ATA33 and those older controllers just switch to the slowest speed of the connected devices!" It would have to be a REALLY old system though..."independent device timing" has been built into most boards since the days of the socket 7 Asus A7N8X-X 1800+ @8x210mhz 512mb PC3200 Ti4200/8X 128mb WDC 60GB

Har har har. My system isn't *that* old. It's ATA66. And what you (free weasel) said is true, now that I think about it. I forever had my harddrive stuck in UDMA2 mode and I couldn't figure out why. Windows 2000 Professional SP4 Intel PIII 733 256k Coppermine / 144MB pc100RAM Coming soon hopefully AMD Athlon XP 2500-2800 512MB PC2700 RAM