SATA DVD-ROMs and Burners

[plonk420]

so Doom9's latest post got me thinking: how many drives exactly ARE there?

a NewEgg scan resulting in 0 DVDROMs and all of 2 DVDRWs, overpriced Plextors.

Plextor PX-716SA/SW (a mere $120)
Plextor PX-755SA (slightly more affordable $110)

after a bit of a google search (ok, a looong 20 seconds), i pulled up a(n)

MSI XA52P, back from summer 2004 (~$54 availible at all of 2 stores on froogle)

next were a Pioneer, LG, and 2 Panny external-SATAs but those aren't of THAT much use IMO... (plus $90-190)

a little bit more and i found a recent drive (4.1.06, in fact),

Samsung SH-W163 (30GBP after VAT...and nothing here in north america)

so is that all? and Intel is going to not have native IDE, eh? :|

[Nudnik]

All hail Plextor, the king of drives. Seriously, you should give Plextor some consideration, even at current prices.

[sNNooPY]

All hail Plextor, the king of drives. Seriously, you should give Plextor some consideration, even at current prices.
overrated.

[Blue_MiSfit]

roger that. LiteOn is the way to go.. $40 shipped cant be beat...

Why bother with SATA optical drives? Aside from the nice small cables, there's no real reason.

I dont like the idea of trying to install an OS off a SATA drive. It might work fine, but it's got a lot of question marks...

Also, current optical technology is nowhere near saturating the IDE interface. Even the fastest DVD+/-RW's only use ATA/66, and dont come close to utalizing that all the time...

[HardwareGeek]

HiWhy bother with SATA optical drives?

You don't have to mess with master / slave settings
Thin SATA will not block airflow, like parallel ATA cables, or create hot spots inside a case
Eventually you're not going to have a choice

I dont like the idea of trying to install an OS off a SATA driveIt works no different from installing off a parallel ATA device.
current optical technology is nowhere near saturating the IDE interfaceI think this is correct.

[Blue_MiSfit]

1) Mucking about with master/slave is not difficult. There are three possible settings.

2) True, though I think the impact of this is relatively minimal for 99% of users

3) True... It's a shame.

I used to be a huge supporter of SATA everything, but I just see no reason to use a SATA optical drive. It's fantastic for hard drives, especially RAID, because every drive gets its own channel, and all the other great reasons... OH well :)

[HardwareGeek]

Hi

I don't see a strong reason to use SATA optical drives either. But I don't see a strong reason not to use a SATA optical drive as well. Some motherboards have 8 SATA connectors on them.

All the best

[Doom9]

Samsung also has spanking new drive now.
From a technology standpoint it really doesn't matter.. it doesn't matter for HDs either at this point but for HDs it will. And SATA is just more manageable. Master/slave has long since become a none issue with cable select, but getting those cables from MB to your device can still be a hassle if you build your own box.
And having one interface instead of two certainly doesn't hurt either. I'm dreaming of a future where we have just SATA (both internal and external), and USB and that's it. Well, perhaps Firewire because of digital video recorders, but no IDE, no serial, parallel and PS2 interfaces - oh yeah, and no floppy ports: the best thing about Vista is that it can load third party drivers from any device during the setup process. More than a decade after I got rid of the last of these buggers Microsoft is finally getting a grip on reality in that department.

[HardwareGeek]

SATA is just more manageableThere you go. More manageable.

Master / slave is unfortunately still an issue for organizations running mission-critical legacy applications on older computers.

External SATA should replace the external hard drives, with USB and Firewire interfaces. It's throughput should be over 3 times that of 1394b and about 6 times that of USB2. With DV & HD files in the gigabytes, we could really use the speed.

I think that one reason home NAS has not taken off is that it was slow to hit gigabit Ethernet speeds. And now external SATA should offer speeds about 3 times that of gigabit Ethernet.

[Nudnik]

SATA has been great for me. Much less hassle swapping things about when I need to.

My SATA II HD has been a great performer, although I prefer to use it with Linux.

[deets]

yeah SATA is simpler, but those flimsy connectors are a nightmare. ive had one break on mainboard and one on a hard drive....

and installing an OS on mine requires the floppy drive as xp sp2 dont have my drivers...

as for airflow, i use rounded ide cables anyway :)

[HardwareGeek]

those flimsy connectors are a nightmare. ive had one break on mainboard and one on a hard driveI've heard that initially the connectors were bad, but that they have now been improved. Were your bad experiences with older SATA connectors?

installing an OS on mine requires the floppy drive as xp sp2 dont have my driversWere you installing for a RAID setup?

thx

[foxyshadis]

Whenever someone needs nforce raid (ugh), I just slipstream the drivers into XP now. It was just way too much hassle last time I tried to do do a usb key mapping. Fortunately almost every other type of raid driver is on the 2003 discs.

[plonk420]

yeah SATA is simpler, but those flimsy connectors are a nightmare. ive had one break on mainboard and one on a hard drive....

and installing an OS on mine requires the floppy drive as xp sp2 dont have my drivers...

as for airflow, i use rounded ide cables anyway :)

no criticism intended in the tone, but, do you swap drives often? i the most i've swapped something is like 2 or 3 times in a year... as much fun as it used to be, i don't like swapping hardware much anymore... and i've screwed up a few (of my dozens) of IDE cables, separating cable from plug :O .. SATA seems harder to screw up.

as long as OSes have no issue booting from SATA optical drives, i'd have no issue ;-\

Samsung also has spanking new drive now.
From a technology standpoint it really doesn't matter.. it doesn't matter for HDs either at this point but for HDs it will. And SATA is just more manageable. Master/slave has long...[blah blah blah]

have a model number? and +/-RW? or do they have a cheap -ROM yet? i'm more looking for cheap -ROM, myself.

also, i wonder if Laptop form factors may become more popular? (unless it's at the expense of life-expectancy)

[Doom9]

Samsung W163A
It's a burner.. of course dual format and with all the latest burning speeds.
Considering burners are dirt cheap, I don't see the sense of getting a non burner unit anymore and I've not had space for more than 1 5.25" unit for years now - ever since I moved to barebones.