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Must be grounded to work properly, and I suggest the 20" ones and not the 28" ones.

Blade, why do they have to be grounded? Does it enhance the shielding? eGo

yea, thats what it does. I have one on my 200g WD and it improved proformance a little...I just wish they made them with only one plug instead of the 2...that would make my case alot neeter.

Greg

Like nexus said, that is why. My performance was better, though not as good as I have seen some on the net say they achieved. It may be becasue the sample I received was the longest version. I believe my results would have been better with the shorter version.

I just got the 20" cable you said was better in performance than the 28" and I've tried it in two seperate computer systems running sisoft sandra and hd tach to bench them before and after with ZERO change in performance. I talked to my electrical engineer friend and he says because of the nature of the IDE cable it either works or doesn't, there will be no performance difference. He suggested I report the company to the authorities.

do you have it grounded? cause it does help a little.

Greg

Yes, it's grounded. Any improvement you may have noticed is a placebo effect. Unless of course you have a ata133 drive and were using a dma33 cable or other non 133 cable

OK I understand the concept of EMI protection, but you cant tell me that you are actually gonna fall for some company saying that the cable id gonna improve the performance? First off, most harddrives, even the ATA133 or even the new SATA drives even dont get much above a speed that ATA66 could handle. It can spurt up to higher transfer rates from time to time, but most of the time, it wont go much more that that. It is a physical limitation of the drive itself, and how fast the platters spin. So a cable isnt gonna do jack

As uncola said, it is the placebo effect. Althou, those look pretty nice

Originally posted by ShibasScotch
OK I understand the concept of EMI protection, but you cant tell me that you are actually gonna fall for some company saying that the cable id gonna improve the performance? First off, most harddrives, even the ATA133 or even the new SATA drives even dont get much above a speed that ATA66 could handle. It can spurt up to higher transfer rates from time to time, but most of the time, it wont go much more that that. It is a physical limitation of the drive itself, and how fast the platters spin. So a cable isnt gonna do jack

As uncola said, it is the placebo effect. Althou, those look pretty nice

Incorrect.. If there is noise present on the line it will cause errors. If there are errors the system slows down the transfer so it can perform ECC functions.. Regardless of how much bandwidth the system can use it can still take a hit from having to resend data due to damage.


Regards,
Chaos
Computer Repair, Cisco Networking

Welcome ChaosBlizzard to PCA Forums.

You are correct about there being a difference between shielded and unshielded cables. It's just the performance difference wasn't enough to justify the cost of the cables. Though if you think about it, the HD are the slowest component of the system, even a small performance gain, I feel, is justifiible.

The same goes for network cable, as I am sure you know. Though I have to ask, how much network cable have you seen(Cat5e or better) that is grounded?

Originally posted by The_Frapster
Welcome ChaosBlizzard to PCA Forums.

You are correct about there being a difference between shielded and unshielded cables. It's just the performance difference wasn't enough to justify the cost of the cables. Though if you think about it, the HD are the slowest component of the system, even a small performance gain, I feel, is justifiible.

The same goes for network cable, as I am sure you know. Though I have to ask, how much network cable have you seen(Cat5e or better) that is grounded?

When I make CAT5 cable I ALWAYS ground it.. I was taught to do so under the CISCO Curriculum. My Professor always made it a point to ground the cables. Anyway I would pay the $14.95 just because the cables are solid.. If you know what I mean.

Hmm, how did your instructor tell you to ground Cat 5?