Anyone ever had data problems with rounded cables?

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Paithar

[H]ard|Gawd
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About 6 months or so ago I had to buy a new hard drive. Normally I buy Western Digital but at the time there was a good buy on Maxtors. So I bought a 40GB Maxtor 7200RPM hard drive. Also, from a completely different store I bought a couple of generic rounded IDE cables in an effort to improve air flow in my case.

Well, ever since then I've been having problems with data integrity on my Maxtor drive. I've had to reformat and reinstall Windows XP on average once a month because for some reason out of the blue when I boot up I get a blank screen. There's no warning signs whatsoever and I can't even boot into safe mode. I also cannot fix the problem with recovery console or a simple repair install. I have to do a complete format and reinstall.

Here are my specs...
Chaintech Mobo (don't remember the exact model at the moment)
Duron 900mhz
256MB Generic RAM
40GB Maxtor HD
GeForce 2 mx 200
SoundBlaster Live 5.1

I was mainly just curious if anyone else has had any problems with their rounded cables causing anything like this or if maybe I just got a bad hard drive?
 
I haven't had any problems with rounded cables yet (I run a floppy and a CD-RW drive on them), but my cousin had problems when he used them in his floppy drive.

The best advice I can give is to either try using rounded cables from more reputable manufacturers (generics are usually shoddier in quality), or switch over to ribbon cables and see if that helps. If not, could be drive problems.
 
I've yet to encounter any problems with my Vantec round ata cables. I also have a maxtor HD, 2 cd drives and floppy running round cables. It may be because that they're generic....blegh, generic computer parts suck.
 
It doesn't sound to me like your cables are the problem, but he easiest fix is to replace them, and see if the problem goes away. Try regular flat cables. I've never had a problem with mine, but all my rounded cabled are CoolerMaster.
 
I had some interesting corruption issues with my old D740X when it was using a (longish) rounded cable.
Ended up low-leveling the sucker and putting it on a standard teflon coated ATA100 cable and have not had the problem since.
You might want to check out the Maxtor utility to see if your drive is having *real* problems.
 
I have been using rounded cables that I cut and wrapped myself (is that generic enough for you) and have never had any problems. I use them for three hard drives, a floppy, and a CDRW.
 
SATA and the 7 Deadly Sins of Parallel ATA
ATA Not So Frequently Asked Questions Or: Why Ribbon Cables are unsuitable for RF transmission of data
Fancy IDE leads - The Terrible Truth

there is nothing intrinsically wrong with rounded cables, if they are done properly,
(see SCSI externals) but few IDE cables are,
and as pointed out above IDE is arguably past its reliable threshold for the current speed,
there are a few high quality IDE Rounds out there though

RD3XP Gladiator
"RD3XP is made from ATA 100/133 High impedance flat cable cut into 8 layers of 10 cable wires, with a ground wire and signal wire alternatively, and folded in zigzag-piled so that each signal wire is surrounded by 4 ground wires.

The problem usually with flat cable is the inability to avoid crosstalk, which is the interference between two cables causing undesirable signals induced from one cable to another, which may lead to possible bit errors that delays data transmission process. Most cable makers ignore this matter, not realizing the serious effect it caused, but with the RD3XP design, folded 8 layers with 10 wires and placing an aluminum shield for each layer could definitely refrain your cable from crosstalk dilemma."

Noise Durability Test click on a PIC to see results
(note there is no high quality TPO or Teflon flat IDE cable in this test)
 
Thanks for the feedback everyone. I think for a little while I switch back to flat cables just to see if it my problem goes away. If it ends up being my stupid generic round cables I'll probably go out and buy some better ones. Anyone have any reccomendations on good ones to get or a good place to buy them through.
 
Originally posted by Icewindius
Been using rounded IDE cables for years and no problems.
Click to expand...

http://www.dansdata.com/rcables.htm
How come they work, then?
What may be causing you a certain amount of confusion at this juncture is the fact that there are people all over the world successfully using over-length ATA cables. Including round ones. Some people use cables 750mm or even 900mm in length, without causing any obvious explosions or outbreaks of smallpox. How so, I hear you ask.

Again, two reasons.

Reason one - good enough components at each end of the cable can deal with more signal corruption than the IDE specification demands of them. Modern ATA hardware is pretty darn good at dealing with lousy cables. Older drives typically have lower tolerances, and some older motherboard IDE chipsets did brilliant things like effectively connect the two IDE connectors together as far as length-related problems went, resulting in seven inch real world cable length limits if you attached cables to both connectors. But those days are largely past. Current consumer IDE hardware can shout through the noise quite well.

Reason two - IDE covers up data loss problems. The ATA interface has CRC error checking built in. When data's munged in transit down the cable, the error is detected and the data is resent.

More>
Click to expand...

it boils down to this
that if your current configuration of devices works, and your not experiencing any data corruption, great
but if you have difficulties integrating a new device, maintaining good data transfer (droping out of DMA or intermittent DMA) low transfer speeds, ect. You really need to consider the cables

Ive personally sworn off purchasing any new PATA
(except for opticals, which are still at DMA mode 2 > 33MB/s)
and will be employing SATA not for any "performance" gain which at this point really isnt there for a single HDD or the majority of chipsets, but for the data integrity.

If your experiencing data corruption you now need to move the cables as a suspect up the list, to right behind memory and power issues ;)
 
the only thing that i noticed with rounded cables are a slower boot time...ionno why but i had a slower boot time of about 5 sec when i switched
btw, i have some cheapo generic rounded cables if that makes a difference
 
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