Parallel ATA (PATA) 80-Conductor Ultra ATA 66/100 Cable

As shown below, connectors on this cable are colored for ease of use: black (master), gray (slave) and blue (motherboard/controller).

Black Master Connector

The black connector attaches to the master drive. In most cases, this remains attached to the original drive when adding a second drive, leaving the original drive cabled and jumpered as master.

Gray Slave Connector (Center)

The gray connector is used to attach an additional drive configured as slave device. If installing an additional drive for increased storage, jumper and cable the new drive as a slave. (Although, some users configure their new drive as master and then jumper and reconnect the existing drive as a slave for performance reasons.)

Blue Motherboard/Controller Card Connector

The blue connector attaches to the motherboard or controller card (if present).

Note: the blue end that plugs into the motherboard is farther from the center gray slave connector than the black master connector.

PATA cable length: 18-inch maximum. Ultra ATA cables longer than 18 inches deviate from ATA interface specifications, often experience signal degradation and are not supported by Hitachi Global Storage Technologies.

Typical cable length specifications:

• Total cable length: 10 - 18 inches.
• Length between controller and first drive: 5 - 12 inches.
• Length between drives: 5 - 6 inches.

PATA Cable Type

A 40-pin, 80-conductor Ultra ATA 66/100 cable is required for current model (UDMA 4 and higher) Deskstar PATA drives.

Cable Varieties

There are flat ribbon cables like the one shown above and narrower, rounded cables. A performance trade-off occurs when using round cables. Round cables increase airflow; however, signal cross-talk can manifest in cables with poor shielding, since the conductors are tightly wound.

Note: older ATA drives use a 40-pin cable, an inexpensive ATA cable with 40 wires. Avoid using these cables with newer Hitachi drives for performance and compatibility reasons. Newer Ultra ATA 66/100 cables have a ground in between each line for better resistance to noise, which means better reliability and performance.

Connecting the Drive Using Cable Select

Cable select is an alternative method to having separate jumper settings for master and slave. System manufacturers often provide drives configured to use cable select, which is the standard configuration for many systems.

With cable select, the jumper settings are the same on both drives (set to cable select) and the position on the cable determines whether a drive is master or slave.

Although the standard 80-conductor Ultra ATA cable shown above will work with cable select, some suppliers may not use the standard black, gray, and blue connector color scheme (e.g., all three connectors are black.)

Some of these cables have distinguishing holes in the connectors to indicate placement, rather than using the typical black/gray/blue color scheme. If using a cable that looks different than what is shown above, follow the manufacturer's recommendations.

Typically, with these cables, the middle connector is always slave and the end connector farthest away from the center connector attaches to the controller card or motherboard, while the end connector closest to the center connector is master.

Deskstar PATA drive face, showing connectors and dimensions.

The four-pin DC power connector is designed to mate with AMP part 1-480424 (using AMP pins, part number 350078-4). Equivalent connectors may be used. Pin assignments are shown below, viewed from the end of the drive.