Well I was think thinking what the main differences are and I haven't got an idea. All i realized is that there is a $100 difference between them. What does Sata offer? Speed? Long term reliability? Better performance? If yes, is the difference worth it?

Thanks

The only real reason for getting a SATA burner is to eliminate all of the large parallel style cables from your computer case. This is the reason I am getting one, but as for performance... SATA burners offer a performance gain of minimal to none.

Stick with IDE for now anyway, you basically gain nothing getting sata and you waste money for them.

LiteOn has a SATA DVD combo drive for around $30, but it's always out of stock at newegg. As for SATA DVD burners, yeah, they're around $100.

I still haven't heard of anyone having great success with Sata burners... everyone I know that has had one ended up sending back for IDE, they are just not as reliable yet.

Looks like Ill be a guinea pig, Got a burner and reader from newegg.

System wont be complete until Xmas though...

Only advantage that I can see as of now is that all of the newer MB's only have one IDE cable available....

Call it a conspiracy to force you to upgrade. Remember when M$ supported gameports in 98, and ME? No such thing in XP, is there?

Anyone want to buy a M$ forcefeedback wheel? Or a M$ forcefeedback flightstick? Cheap?

LOL, No thanks.

Labbbby, when will your machine be completed? You can let us know! LOL

I will for sure, It would be already if I could!!!!

Got my self a TJ09 and the case is so pretty I am going to go crazy on cable management.

I might do a full review with many picture of my building experience. Will post my result on Tha Clan Blog... BTW, semi work safe they post a Babe of the week. Not naked but a lot of flesh =).

Complete Built
E6600
Tuniq Tower 120
Buffalo Firestix Pc6400(rated CL5 but can do much better)
2 X 36 raptor 16 meg Raid 0
1 X 320 Seagate
SATA opticals
SilverStone TJ09 + 3 S-Flex 120MM fans
Corsair HX620W
8800GTS
Most likely P5N32-E sli or DFI ICFX3200 if I can get it in time(that`s what retarding the computer!)

I will keep this section updated as well!

ETA for at least SATA windows installation and some minor burning test:
21-22th December.
Full review before Jan 1st

You should be OK with that SATA DVD, I've been using a Samsung one for a few months now and it's been fine no faster than the Sony IDE one in my other rig but no slower either and the loss of airflow restricting cable is a welcome bonus.

Given the current state of technology, specifically the maximum speeds of optical drives and the resulting data rate, SATA offers no performance benefit. Reportedly one or two SATA optical drives may even be PATA drives with SATA/PATA adapters shimmed in. There is no difference in reliability as far as I know. In fact, some of the first SATA -equipped motherboards have had issues with optical drives.

SATA's current benefit for optical drives is mostly one of neater cabling. You could indirectly say that SATA offers an improvement in reliability actually, since the smaller cables cause less interference with air flow inside the computer case.

SATA offers performance levels for the most modern disk drives, whose data transfer rates and interface circuitry are capable of speeds far in excess of what IDE/PATA and all of its re-engineering can handle. (Who remembers ST-506 and ESDI?! The rest of you can look it up in Wikipedia.)

Oh, and ATTN: Croc... ya' should've snagged USB replacements for MS' gameport FF stuff while you could. I saw the writing on the wall, bought a USB FF stick used for $50 right about the time MS stopped making them, and still was able to sell the gameport version for $45.

Conspiracies? Not really. SATA is a dramatic evolution in bandwidth and the simpler cabling also simplifies motherboard design. So too are other improvements like USB, IEEE-1394 (aka iLink and Firewire) and PCIe. Of course none if it matters if you don't mind being stuck in the '90s. But eventually support for the legacy technology is gonna go away in modern software, especially when from a programming, portability and efficiency perspective it's a nightmare to support. Yep, the game port got dropped. You can buy a USB to game port converter but it won't support the bastardized protocol used by the FF equipment. That sort of bastardization is why you don't see support for parallel port tape drives and disk drives any longer either.

-Brad

Only situation where I would ever foresee a performance increase is if you're burning two CDs or DVDs at once like what I do once in a while. In that case, one of the drives for me ends up getting bandwidth starved and it burns slower then the other.

But, not everyone does that so like bberson said before, the biggest improvement is the neater cables.

Hmmm... I seem to recall saying that one could call it a conspiracy, and then mentioned the aforementioned gameport devices. But the whole topic was about the fact that there was now only one ide cable available on most of the newer MB's. If a MB manufacturer provides one IDE connection, why the sudden rush to not offer two? Certainly not in the name of 'keeping prices down'. I think that there will be a lot of legacy ide drives that will need to be upgraded, in order to move to a new motherboard.

Now, I don't call that a 'conspiracy' anymore than I would call every MB manufacturer moving to this new '1 ide cable' design all at the same time a 'conspiracy'. Nor would I call the fact that CPU and GPU price points are up to rather high levels a 'conspiracy'.

But I do get intrigued...

take a look at the new dell computers thay all have SATA cabled optical drives... if dell likes them they got to be good...lol