Rounded IDE cable makes C2 errors?

[Alejandra]

Last weekend I burned 3 CDR with my LiteOn 523252 Drive, after burning them I checked with CDSpeed CD Quality check and showed in every one at least one C2 error spike.

Yesterday I changed the rounded cable for a normal 80 conductor cable, burnt 2 CDR checked and no C2 errors. Then I rechecked some of the media I burned before, one of them shows no C2, the others still but all with less C1 and C2.

Rounded cable is CoolerMaster, with very good shield.

For optical drives is good enough a 40 conductor cable?

[dodecahedron]

For optical drives is good enough a 40 conductor cable?

yes.

[hoxlund]

well i use rounded cables in all my computers that i build for people, and mine too, i have never seen a problem

i mostly use coolermaster cables too

some i have are shielded with copper

[tazdevl]

No they don't. Actually let me clarify.

That rumor started because some folks made their own rounded cables and wound things up a bit too tight, screwed with contacts at the terminations and kinked cables. Also, some manufactuers (non-brand name) were using cheap materials.

[rdgrimes]

We've seen examples of bad cables causing erronious error scans in Kprobe, but I think it would be inaccurate to call them C2 or anything else. "Artifacts" would be a more accurate description, but without seeing the scans, it's hard to comment.

[pranav81]

Yeah,a friend of mine had a 40-conductor cable which resulted in his burner always slipping in PIO mode in Windows XP.Also the number of C2 errors was high,but I didnt think of relating it to the cable.
Changed the cable and everything is going on fine.

See ya dudes later,


::Pranav::

[Alejandra]

Thanks people, I will try with another three different cables, with the rounded I get more C1 and at least 1 C2, but I give it one chance again.

Also since I changed the drive from an Athlon XP to the new P4 I noticed more C1.

[pranav81]

Dear Alejandra,
Hi.I dont think the errors have to do anything with the processor.You may change the cable to a new rounded one and then try burning.If you still see errors then I am outta ideas............


::Pranav::

[Alejandra]

Dear Alejandra,
Hi.I dont think the errors have to do anything with the processor.You may change the cable to a new rounded one and then try burning.If you still see errors then I am outta ideas............


::Pranav::

Well, thanks I apreciated. I didn't think the change of the processor affects the burnning but the change of IDE controller maybe, or my drive is just aging.

[Alejandra]

Major disaster happens yesterday's night. When I back at home the first thing that I did was to change the cable, I place a 40 conductor then I turn on the PC, Win2k rebooted, my RAID was not recognized, I enter the SATA RAID BIOS utility and repair it, then multiple times Win2k try to boot with checking and fixing the partition, I tried to install Win2k in another partition in order to recover my data, NONE, the installer said my disk is corrupted, then I ran Partition Magic tests, same thing, it reported disk is corrupt, I was very distressed, I thought about changing discs and reinstall everything again, but not at that moment, so with more peace in my mind I tough than the only thing I made to chnge the setup of my box was the change of the cable, so I reinstalled the 80 conductor cable, booted, Win2k fixed some indexes and almost everything back to normal, just one driver was missing so I reinstalled it.

The things I tought were that the cables of the SATA RAID disks were bad, I checked them, changed the way their connected. Also that one of the discs failed, or the Dynamic overclocking affected somehow, none of them were.

Somehow the 40 conductor cable is afeccting the SATA RAID, the weird was that I could boot from Win98 CD and Win2k CD, so the 40 conductor cable works with the optical drive but it makes some interference with the SATA RAID. To do the things more weird is that cable worked well in the second channel, weeks ago I connected it to my old DVD-ROM drive because one day my DVD-ROM was not recognized, I thought that my very old drive finally died, before it had a 80 conductor cable that came with the motherboard, one of these cables that came with a tubing to emulate a rounded cable, I changed it to the 40 conductor cable and my DVD-ROM was recognized again.

After made all things back to normal I changed the cables again, I placed another 80 conductor cable to the burner and the rounded to the DVD-ROM, then the rounded cable conected to the burner and the other to the DVD-ROM, then two 80 conductor cable, with every change I made some burns, the results shows that the best combination was the two 80 conductor cables, since I have only one rounded cable, one test is just pending. In one of the burns a C2 error appeared. So final verdict stands still.

One thing is clear no 40 conductor cable with this MoBo.

[dodecahedron]

sounds like the mobo has problematic IDE/SATA/RAID controllers on it.
best stick with non rounded 80-conductor cables.

[Alejandra]

Yes, really extrange because the problem cable works with the DVD-ROM attached, maybe I will make more test connecting that cable on the primary channel but connected to the DVD-ROM or a PIO only drive.

[mrk1283]

I just tested this on my XP Pro slipstreamed CDr


Now this was interesting because the flat ribbon cable was able to read firther into the disc than the rounded cable if you take a look at the screenshots and the ribbons c1 error count was slightly lower too

Akasa silver braided 90CM cable (ATA133)


Shuttle XPC ATA133 Flat ribbon about 30CM long.

[Halc]

Thanks for the tests mrk1283.

Please do remember, that the differences in your scans can fall into the statistical variations sometimes evident when comparing two scans of the same disc.

Also note that the rounded cable is 90 cm long, which is beyond the original ATA specification. The flat cable is 30 cm and provide better signal integrity (in theory) due to its length.

Even more important however is the fact that the disc measurements are done within the drive and not between the drive and the host cpu.

Only the scan results are moved on the ATA cable. Not the data to be analyzed.

As such, if the results are transferred correct (as I assume they are, based on error correction not kicking in), the cable should make no difference.

As such, cable should have bearing on c1/c2 testing, but it might affect transfer rate (and ATA channel utilisation) rates between the host controller and the drive.

A Nero CD Speed test might be more telling.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a firm believer in quality flat ribbon cables and don't use rounded for my ATA devices.

I'm just not convinved that the differences in your scans can be attributed to cable differences.

[mrk1283]

I guess you have a point there though too but I've also noticed that with the 90CM rounded cable that sometimes I get weird problems with my DVD or CDRW drive, both are liteon, a 165H and 52327s respectively but since using the shorter shuttle ribbon cable ive not noticed any problems, also I had a weird problem of writing multisession cd's, at the end of lead-out in nero 6303 nero would just remain static and even though the drive would finish writing and spin down nero would crash effectively taking windows with it (no response).


All fine now though and the same windows cd scanned again brought up fewer errors than the rounded cable