Re: RAID questions...

[Breen Ouellette <the.man@breeno.net>]

J Moore wrote:

>All your red herrings aside, Breen the fact remains that people can and 
>do get very good, reliable performance from round IDE cables.
>
>Jay
>  
>
Well then, here's the first link from Google on the search "80 conductor 
ide"

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/confCable80-c.html

Of particular note:

"The obvious question, of course, is this: what's the point of adding 40 
extra wires to a cable if they aren't connected to anything? :^) Well 
for starters, the 40 wires /are/ connected to something, just not their 
own pins on the interface connectors. The extra 40 wires don't carry new 
information, they are just used to separate the "real" 40 signal wires, 
to reduce interference and other signaling problems associated with 
higher-speed transfers. So the 40 extra conductors are connected to 
ground, interspersed between the original 40 conductors of the old 
cable. Any stray signals that would "cross-talk" between adjacent wires 
on the 40-conductor cable are "absorbed" by these extra ground wires, 
improving signal integrity. The extra ground wires can be either all of 
the even-numbered wires, or all of the odd-numbered wires in the cable."

A rounded cable places signal wires adjacent to each other, thereby 
creating cross talk which DOES result in errors. I owned a computer shop 
for three and a half years, and I have direct experience with this 
phenomenon. As well, I have spoken with support people at several hard 
drive manufacturers in the past, and all of them recommend against the 
use of rounded cables.

Every overclocking website in the world espousing the virtues of rounded 
cables does not negate the fact that it is outside of spec. Any 
REASONABLE person with a REASONABLE desire for data integrity would be 
well advised to stick with flat cables. Next you're gonna tell us to 
overclock our hardware because it is perfectly safe. It never hurt you 
none, right?

Red herrings, indeed. If anything classes as such, it's your personal 
experiences used as ultimate proof to back your 'faith' in rounded 
cables, mixed in with a healthy dose of FUD.

Breeno


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