Newegg has the Sony NEC 18X DVD+/-RW SATA Drive for $32. Apply coupon codeEMC417FSONY for free shipping. You may need to signup for theirnewsletter to use the coupon. Thanks SP33DFR34K.

Hmm I need to grab a new DVD drive - burner and SATA are bonus. May be in for one, have to think about it!

Thanks OP - Rep!

In for one. I didn't even blink. Hehe. Actually i'm building a new comp.

I'd prefer to save my SATA ports for HDDs since there isn't any speed gain with burners and nothing else uses the IDE ports anyway. Oh, and yes I know there isn't much improvement with SATA for individual HDDs, but there is a little and if you use a striped RAID array you could see a lot more.

Quote from awer25 : I'd prefer to save my SATA ports for HDDs since there isn't any speed gain with burners and nothing else uses the IDE ports anyway. Oh, and yes I know there isn't much improvement with SATA for individual HDDs, but there is a little and if you use a striped RAID array you could see a lot more.

i thought there was quite a diff in speed between SATA vs IDE, even for Burners

There is no different but the power plug and connectors. A DVD-RW cannot even take advantage of IDE or SATA. You won't notice a speed increase at all.

Quote from crspyjohn : There is no different but the power plug and connectors. A DVD-RW cannot even take advantage of IDE or SATA. You won't notice a speed increase at all.

there is not even a benefit of a more consistent data transfer at it's peak?

sorry, i am asking all the questions that people may ask later

Quote from zurgboi : there is not even a benefit of a more consistent data transfer at it's peak? sorry, i am asking all the questions that people may ask later

An 18x DVD burner = approx 22MB/s or so. IDE = 133MB/s, SATA-I = 150MB/s and SATA-II = 300MB/s, so the burner won't even approach the limits.

2 HDDs in RAID-0 can get as high as the low 100's (MB/s)

The only benefit is the thinner cable.

one benefit is that ALL sata ports are 'private' unshared ports. with ide, the pri/sec channels are shared.

this also means that each sata port negotiates the rate that the drive can run at and slower ones don't hold the faster ones back.

I think there is actually more error DETECTION on sata and the ability to resend data again. I am not sure if parallel ide has that - I think that was new with sata. (I'm not talking about SMART)

speeds - that's not a reason for sata, though. optical drives are so slow (relatively) that regular ide is even overkill for them.

but sata has benefits other than just simpler wiring and better airflow.

otoh, older os's won't be able to boot from sata or from opto on sata. when sata burners first came out, linux/bsd had problems with them and so I didn't even bother trying. maybe now things are better - but i haven't tried.

if you are all windows, sata is probably the way to go, though.

Quote from TripeoXxX : The only benefit is the thinner cable.

Yeah! The only reason to buy this is for aesthetic reason.

stick to the cheap IDE burners for 10-20 bucks

Quote from diwu1989 : stick to the cheap IDE burners for 10-20 bucks

DVD Burners for $10 - $20? Link please!