Storage Solutions Cable: Extra long?

[cranky]

Hi
I have this case that's freakin' big. The top drive bay is about 2 1/2 feet from the bottom, and my board (Intel DG965WH, GMA X3000) has only one IDE connector, which is right at the bottom of the board.
Basically this means the IDE cable has to be very long, I need at least a couple of feet length between the board plug and the first connector on the cable, then a couple of inches to the next connector. This is not possible with any regular cable.
So the guys over at one nondescript shop on Lamington Road gave a me a 3 foot long ATA-33 40 pin cable with a length of 3 feet. It seemed to work fine on installing Windows, so I didn't think too much about it.
But the drives don't work properly anymore. There are a lot of misreads, the error count is very high, and a lot of imaged CDs (I used daemon a lot) come out corrupted and unreadable.
While I'm more than willing to ascribe the problems to the drives (Samsungs, one is a combo and the other a DVD-writer), when I up the retry count in Nero the CDs seem to copy over OK, and CDex also manages to get the audio out 100%. Plus, I've never had such weird problems with my earlier board/cable/drive combination.
I really need a good, preferably shielded, long ATA cable. Would anyone know where such a creature may be available?
Thanks for your help!

 

[vivtho]

IDE cables can reliable transfer data only over a maximum distance of 1.5 feet. A cable that is any longer might transfer data, but it will be unreliable.

From Wikipedia

The ATA standard has always specified a maximum cable length of just 46 cm (18 inches). This can cause difficulties in connecting drives within a large computer case, or when mounting several physical drives into one computer, and it all but completely eliminates the possibility of using parallel ATA for external devices. Although longer cables are widely available on the market, it must be understood that they are outside the parameters set by the specifications. The same is true of the "rounded" cables also commonly available: The ATA standard describes flat cables with particular impedance and capacitance characteristics. This is not to say that the non-standard cables won't work, it just means that if they are used it should be with caution.