In message , Andrew Gabriel
writes
In article ,
raden writes:
There is a length limit, although I forget what it is.

Original ATA spec is 46cm. I believe it got shorter with the
higher speed modes but I don't have those specs.

[Parallel] ATA is very rapidly giving way to SATA now. I saw
some figures for two months ago with SATA drive sales almost up
to ATA ones, and they will have overtaken by now unless there
was a dramatic change in direction of the straight line on
the graph. ATA drive sales look like they'll drop to almost
zero in less than a year. Was browsing around a computer store
in the US two weeks ago, and SATA drives were actually cheaper
than equivalent ATA ones (not sure that's true here quite yet).

BTW, beware of Maxtor drives ATM, in a discussion elsewhere, quite a few
people are getting failures within the warranty period

--
geoff