More that 2 optical drives

bushmins · 30 Jun 2007 at 17:41

I have the DS3 and have a CD-RW drive and a DVD drive connect up via the ribbon cable.

Is there any way to connect a third optical drive (DVD) on the DS3 (Not using the SATA connection).

Will_3rd · 30 Jun 2007 at 17:43

Nope wouldn't think so.

MeatLoaf · 30 Jun 2007 at 17:58

Not unless you get a PCI IDE card which will let you connect up to another 4

bushmins · 30 Jun 2007 at 19:58

Ok, thanks for the replys.
DVD SATA drives are not too expensive, thats the route ill take.

Another question, do DVD drives use a lot of power from the supply?

Snapshot · 30 Jun 2007 at 20:03

You can get IDE to SATA convertors that plug on the back of IDE drives but they cost as much as buying a new SATA drive.

The extra power drawn by an optical drive isn't enough to worry about when compared with the CPU and graphics card.

K.C. Leblanc · 30 Jun 2007 at 22:32

Let us know why you need that many optical drives. It seems like an odd request, we might have some other ideas.

semi-pro waster · 30 Jun 2007 at 22:39

Optical drives don't take up huge amounts of power, perhaps 15w tops at a rough guess and most of that is from spin up.

As has been mentioned you can get IDE-SATA adapters (Abit Serielle is one) or IDE controller cards but as also said it is unlikely to work out much cheaper than just buying a SATA DVDRW.

MeatLoaf · 1 Jul 2007 at 09:15

In my experience the IDE to SATA adapters dont work with optical drives - i know for certain that the abit seillells dont as ive tried

InvaderGIR · 1 Jul 2007 at 11:46

You may aswell just buy a new IDE DVD-+RW as it'll burn all CDs and DVDs for you, so you can flogg the CDRW, and keep the DVD ROM for just reading discs...this is what I did till I bought a second DVD-+RW (this time on SATA).

InvG