IDE DVD writer and SATA hard drive?????

They don't need to be on the same interface. I don't know where that came from. You'll be fine.

They dont have to be on the same interface.

I read it on the Tigerdirect guide to installing dvd drives. http://www.tigerdirect.com/static/html/learn-installing...

That article also says that DVD's are 12" in diameter, and doesn't talk about SATA at all... While they cover the basics of installing a drive, I don't think I'd put much weight on their advice.

Clint

Agreed. Snowmanman's drive setup sounds like mine.

Yeah. It's the way my machine is set up. And since SATA optical drives are relatively new compared to SATA hard drives, it's a very common way to have things configured.

Clint

the article does say things about SATA, but you misinterpreted it.
It is recommending to you that if you have an IDE hard disk, you most likely need an IDE DVD drive, because your computer probably doesn't have SATA support.
Conversely, if your system has SATA hard disks, you may want to get a SATA DVD drive, because you know it supports SATA, and some computers that have SATA ports don't necessarily have IDE ports. (SATA is faster anyway, so if you have it, why not?)

It's just a recommendation to new people on what kind they should get, so they don't have to do a bunch of figuring.

As far as I can tell, the article says nothing about SATA. I even did a search for "SATA" and "serial" before responding. It does talk about SCSI and IDE/ATA, however. So my thought was that the article was written before SATA drives were out, indicating it's age.

Also, practically speaking, SATA isn't faster than ATA. In particular, DVD drives aren't going to be able to saturate either interface.

Clint