SATA versus IDE

[ritzchef]

I have a LG GH22NS50 SATA dvd burner. I am having trouble with it burning DVD-R media. Assuming I need to replace the drive, can someone suggest an alternative drive? Is sata that much bettere than ide? I do have sata hdd's. Thank for your help.

[ripken204]

there is really no difference between ide and sata for dvd drives.

i would recommend sata purely because a sata cable is MUCH smaller than an ide cable

it is hard to go wrong on a DVD drive but here are some highly rated ones:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16827151175

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16827136144

[CoffeeFiend]

there is really no difference between ide and sata for dvd drives

If you're only using the DVD writer on the IDE cable perhaps, but IDE (PATA) is shared.

i would recommend sata purely because a sata cable is MUCH smaller than an ide cable

That's just the very beginning. They're a pain to run (bends are a PITA), they block airflow, there's less and less of them ports on any motherboard as they're now considered legacy stuff and so on. Plus, jumpers are a unnecessary bother (trying to get to it, in a case in a hard to reach place that's not well lit, right between all those IDE & power cables, poking blindly with your fingers). There's no reason to pick IDE anymore these days. Even the slight price advantage it used to have is gone now (in fact, it's often more expensive)

it is hard to go wrong on a DVD drive

Well, I'd say it's really not that hard. Loads of them not long ago didn't work right in AHCI or RAID mode (been burned before), but that's being sorted out pretty quickly. Still, not all drives are the same. The latest Samsung drives I bought are fast, burn fine and all that, but they're some of the loudest drives I've ever seen (annoying). I just installed an LG drive last Sunday and it was quieter, but I haven't tried burning with it or anything (just used it to install Win7 in a new box).

Then again, there will be some people replying with their fetish brand (Pioneer seems to be the latest trend to replace Plextor for them)...

[pointertovoid]

Some Dvd/Cd burners take over 10s to be ready when you insert a disk. Important for my choice.

Having had 2 dead or ailing burners, I consider their choice is important and even put the necessary money to buy my last one - it was even a new one, imagine that. Used case, Cpu, OS licence, Ssd, supply - but new burner. Remember their laser diode has a limited lifespan.

To choose it, I googled both

<burner name>

<burner name> problem

and made the ratio of the number of hits. Maybe not a completely fair method, but more so than Newegg's "customer" comments.

The ratio varies between 0.2% and 30%, figure that! And it's not related to the number of answers.

[spacesurfer]

Darn! My samsung won't do lightscribe anymore. I can't figure out what's wrong. i get some crazy error that I can't recall but something about lightscribe printer does not exist. burning seems to work okay.

I've tried firmware updates, still no go.