Is this the ideal way to hook up a CD or DVD burner

[mikekazik1]

Over a year ago, I put together a new desktop PC. All of the parts, with the exception of the computer case and the CD/DVD burner, were new. Both the CD burner and DVD burner are older IDE devices, NOT SATA devices. The motherboard I am using, a Gigabyte MA785GM-US2H (rev. 1.0). Right now, the computer is using a SATA hard drive. In the past, I had a problem in which the computer would not start properly when I had one of the IDE devices hooked up. I was able to fix the problem by going into BIOS and having the the computer boot from the hard drive. I hooked up the IDE device as a slave, not as a master. This is the only IDE device that is connected. Is this the best way to hook up the IDE device? Or do I need to hook it up as a master? Will there be writing errors if I have it hooked up as a slave?

 

[Rusting In Peace]

I don't expect there to be any issues with this. If the drives shows up in your OS then it's good to go.

 

[ssddx]

the only problem i could see is if you ever wanted to boot from a disk you may have to change your boot priority to the cd drive first and hard drive second in order to get it to work.

i don't see any issues other than that, just like rusting in peace suggested.

however just one thing of note: you can get a new (and faster) cd/dvd burner for as little as $10-15 oem. the new ones have sata connections. since you said you bought new components other than the burners, perhaps it is worthwhile to upgrade those as well (since its certainly cheap enough).

 

[mikekazik1]

Thanks for the input. Would having this kind of setup only be a problem if there were multiple IDE devices connected to the same channel? ssddx, I probably will be getting new drives sometime in the next year or so. These burners are about 10 years old. How long could they possibly last? I figured that I would just use them will they are toast and then consider getting a Blu-ray burner. By then, the price will have gone down even more.

 

[Rusting In Peace]

If it was the same channel it would just be a master / slave arrangement so this would be ok. I suspect you'd run into troubles if you were also trying to run IDE hard drives in another channel though.

As for how long that 10 year burner is going to last, well, I doubt anyone can predict. Continuing to use these drives is not a bad idea. Sony have said the next blu-ray format will not be compatible with the previous version. So perhaps holding on is a good idea if you were considering buying a BR burner!

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

This topic has been closed by Area51reopened

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

Best answer selected by Area51reopened.