Which DVD rewriter? Sata or IDE?

J

JimmiG

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So the tray on my old Lite-On 16X IDE DVD writer stopped working a long time ago so I have to use the emergency eject hole to eject it. I've decided to finally replace it when I'm in town today.

My favorite local store seems to carry Sony and Samsung writers. Which one would you choose? The Samsung 22X or the Sony NEC Optiarc AD-5200A?

The Samsung drive is SATA, the Sony drive is IDE. I know the advantages of SATA but are there any disadvantages (compatibility with copy protection, booting from discs for exampe)? If not, I suppose the SATA drive is the way to go, unless Samsung makes poor drives?
 
Either will be fine. Older hardware may not really like SATA optical drives (any by older, you only have to look back a couple years).

I have a couple of the Plextor PX-800A, which is IDE and supposedly an Optiarc. Very happy with it, I run one in a Vantec USB external for my laptop, and it works great there too.
 
id go with the Samsung 22x, ive got a Samsung now and never had any problems with it 3 years going.
 
iroc409 said:
Either will be fine. Older hardware may not really like SATA optical drives (any by older, you only have to look back a couple years).

I have a couple of the Plextor PX-800A, which is IDE and supposedly an Optiarc. Very happy with it, I run one in a Vantec USB external for my laptop, and it works great there too.
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I'd go with SATA barring power-connection/data connector issues. Three reasons:

1. SATA has more bandwidth (extremely useful for higher-speed DVD burns) than PATA/IDE.

2. More often than not, you have more SATA ports available than PATA (not counting RAID-specific ports), as most motherboards that still have PATA ports (some lack them altogether) have just one (supporting two devices).

3. Better airflow (even using Molex to SATA adapters for power). SATA cables (both data and power) are thinner and less resistant to airflow than 80-connector ribbon/Molex power cabling used for PATA/IDE. While native SATA power connections are best, Molex-to-SATA-power connectors also act as extenders, letting you move the cable in question out of the airflow path.

You'd have to go pretty darn far back to find CPU issues where PATA would be preferred over SATA; usually, it's a motherboard (specifically chipset) issue. The original ASUS P4C800 Deluxe (and the later 800-E Deluxe) were both designed for the original P4 Northwood (though later BIOS updates would let them take not only later Northwoods, but S478 Prescotts as well). The linchpin of the design was the Intel 875P chipset and the ICH5 series southbridge, which included native SATA (later SATA RAID and matrix RAID) support as standard fare. I still have my 800-E Deluxe (which has a P4 2.6 Northwood-C mounted) which will, at some point, replace the older MSI P4 Northwood-B in mom's desktop. I had originally bought the E not just for the Northwood-B and later C support (and the built-in Intel gigabit Ethernet), but the native SATA support (my Maxtor 200 GB SATA drive was bought originally for the E).
 
Couple years back? I built the system in my Sig back in 2006 and have had no compatibility problems with SATA.

I say SATA. IDE is deprecated, obsolete. There is little reason to buy into IDE today if you have SATA interfaces ICH8 (maybe even 7) or newer.
 
I had problems with high-end Intel boards with ICH7 and SATA optical drives. Your motherboard may behave better than those did, but I used Intel boards for a while almost exclusively and had a few issues.
 
iroc409 said:
I had problems with high-end Intel boards with ICH7 and SATA optical drives. Your motherboard may behave better than those did, but I used Intel boards for a while almost exclusively and had a few issues.
Click to expand...

For some weird reason, the nForce 630i will *not* let Windows 7 install clean with a SATA *optical* drive connected (though installing onto SATA hard drives works fine). The issue will persist even when installing from a PATA optical drive; if the SATA optical drive is powered up, Windows 7 will complain. However, if you reconnect the power to the drive post-install, Windows 7 will detect it and automagically configure it (even without an Internet connection). I have a Samsung SH-223 (the non-LightScribe 22x DL SATA DVD burner, AKA SH-223B).
Are there BIOS settings unique to the 630i when using SATA optical drives either in combo with their PATA relatives, as I'm set up now or exclusively, that solve this problem?

After further investigation, it has to do with AHCI and optical drives; a definite no-no for operating-system installs. Unfortunately, with most SATA controllers, you can't set AHCI for an individual port (it's all or none) That means it's IDE for the install, then you can *safely* switch to AHCI post-install (Windows will install the proper driver then; it just won't do so at install time).
 
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