Optical drive choice

timbo2410 · 18 Apr 2010 at 08:26

I have an Asus A8N sli Deluxe mobo which has two DVD-RW drives connected via a wide ribbon cable. Is this IDE and if so what would you guys suggest for a replacement ... I'm not fussed about Blue ray as long as it can write dual layer and it's reliable I don't care ...

Amakuma · 18 Apr 2010 at 08:31

I believe the A8N has 4 Sata ports so your not just restricted to IDE for your replacement choices or do you just want IDE drives?

ultrakipper · 18 Apr 2010 at 08:51

I like the pioneer drives , any new dvd burner will burn Duel Layer.

stulid · 18 Apr 2010 at 08:53

It does have sata ports, so unless they are all being used, buy one

timbo2410 · 18 Apr 2010 at 09:03

I have three hard drives that are sata (i think) they have the small red and orange leads and plug in at the bottom of the board. The dvd drives are both linked together and the one connection is made to the mobo at the top of the board. Ther are two other spare IDE slots next to the one that is for the DVD drives, I don't know what these are ... but yes I just looked and there is one spare sata connector spare as well .... does it make a difference whether I use sata or IDE ?

stulid · 18 Apr 2010 at 09:09

Its just more tidy than a fat ribbon.

DVD drives never max out a IDE port, so neither SATA.

Krellor · 18 Apr 2010 at 11:54

On a side note, do oem/retail optical drives come with any dvddecoder/burning software?

mattjd · 18 Apr 2010 at 11:58

Majority of retail dvd-rw's come with some sort of burning software. But you could always use the freeware programme imgburn to burn things.

timbo2410 · 18 Apr 2010 at 16:47

thanks for the help everybody .... I'm sure I'll have many questions down the track