how can I tell an 80 wire ata cable from an 40 wire ata cable?.. does it say on it?.. Shuttle AN35N- Ultra AMD 2100+ 1Gb 2100 DDRAM Gforce 5600 128ddr 120 of 7200 HD space Genuine Win XP Pro UV Clear Acrylic Blue case Shuttle AN35N- Ultra AMD 2100+ 1Gb 2100 DDRAM Gforce 5600 128ddr 120 of 7200 HD space Genuine Win XP Pro UV Clear Acrylic Blue case

wow ok I figured it out... I just counted a cable that had really fine wires, got 80... now a good question is I have round ide cables in my computer... how do I know if they are 80 wire or 40? Shuttle AN35N- Ultra AMD 2100+ 1Gb 2100 DDRAM Gforce 5600 128ddr 120 of 7200 HD space Genuine Win XP Pro UV Clear Acrylic Blue case

Look near the connector. All the round cables I've ever seen still have some of the cable exposed as a flat ribbon. Also, your BIOS will probably complain if you use 40 conductor cables for drives that do ATA66 or better.

By the rating on the cable. 40 wire are only rated at ATA33. If you want to move to round cables, look for cables with shielding on them. Not all round cables are shielded. With shielding you can get a longer cable that can still perform at ATA100. This comes in handy when you need to run the slave connector up and then come back down with the master, an almost impossible feat with flat cables. Shop around too. Prices are all over the board.

yea I have round cables.... the one I use as my primary is coper shielded.. now my secondary isn't.. but only my cd-roms are on that one.. is there a way to know in windows if I am running my HD's at 100/133? Shuttle AN35N- Ultra AMD 2100+ 1Gb 2100 DDRAM Gforce 5600 128ddr 120 of 7200 HD space Genuine Win XP Pro UV Clear Acrylic Blue case

I wouldn't worry to much about the difference between ATA/100 and ATA/133. ATA/133 is proprietary to Maxor and makes little difference to the actual performance of the drive. Its really little more than a marketing ploy. However, the difference between ATA/33 and ATA/100 is noticeable. The best place to find out is to look a BIOS boot screen during boot up. That will tell you what speed the disk are running at. Windows will take its information from that. You can tell if a round cable 80 way by looking at the connectors. They are colour coded whereas with 40 cable they will all be the same colour. The connectors are coloured Blue which must go to the motherboard. Grey for the slave drive and Black for the Master. Or you can download and run Aide32. This will tell you everything you need to konw about your computer. www.aida32.hu Stuart