Which burners to keep?

[MonsterMan]

Core 2 is right around the corner (yippie!)...I'm planning on nabbing a 965-based mobo.

The problem? The ones I've seen only have a single PATA port - and I have 5 DVD burners (4 PATA/1 SATA).

So, the problem:
1. PX-716 - It's a SATA, so it's in by default. My best DVD+R DL burner (I burn alot of 'em).

2. Benq 1655 - Some of the best write quality I've seen, and the ability to rip discs that even choke the Plex. Lightscribe is a nice bonus. Better than the 1620 with TYs, though.

3. LG-4167 - My fastest drive and the one that burns to TYs the best - makes it my main data backup drive right now.

4. Benq 1620 - The best all-around burner on the planet; also the best at burning Verbatiums/Imation MBI discs (PIE=.99!). Plus my main scanning drive. My least used drive (trying to save it for critical data backups), since it can't be replaced since stupid BenQ discontinued it.

5. Samsung S162L - currently my main ripper. Burning LS discs on this now to save wear-and-tear on the 1655. The drive I use to burn the crap I don't care about (ie, 99.9% of my movie backups (since I still have the orginals, I can just rerip them if needed) or stuff for friends (since I don't care about the quality of their stuff ).

So there it is; each drive I have I have for a reason...I care very much about quality, since 90+% of what I burn is data discs, not movies.

The 1620 seems like a shoe-in, but I don't want to use it except for the really important stuff, so everything else would fall to the Plex and PATA drive #2...

I may just grab a PATA controller card, but I have NOT had good luck with those in the past (with HDDs, though). How are opticals on those things? Biggest con for one is the old Promise card I used to have added a TON of time to the system boot...NOT cool.

Edit: Oh yeah, check out the preview of the upcoming Abit 965 mobo:
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=2693

Look at the pics...see the PATA port? WTF were those idiots smoking to put it there!?! No Abit for me this time, that's for damn sure! And what's with the scattering of the SATA ports all over the stupid board? Idiots...

[Ian]

Why not pick up a few external USB 2.0 (or eSATA) cases and put your infrequently used drives in those? I've thought about doing that with the drives I used for write quality testing.

I see what you mean about the PATA port. That would probably be a good spot if you were gonna run the cable along the bottom and hook it up to a HDD, but most people are buying SATA drives now and using PATA for optical drives.

[CowboySlim]

10-4 on the external USB box. I've got a HDD in one now but I bought the 5.25 model so I can do optical if I want to.

[Scour]

I read that a controller-card with a ITE 8212-chipset works good with optical drives, maybe u should try it

[Justin42]

Or maybe you could try an IDE-SATA converter. I'm using one on my Toshiba 1712 (a DVD-ROM, granted) and it works like a charm with no problems. Since most new mobos seem to have 5000000 SATA ports it'd probably work out ok.

(I wanna know what the people who design motherboards are smoking-- you'd think after this many years they could get basic layout right...)

[hoxlund]

companies need to start making more sata optical drives

and people need to ditch old boring ide, it would make my job a lot easier

excuse me sir, how do you install this hard drive/optical drive

[MonsterMan]

Or maybe you could try an IDE-SATA converter.

Execellent idea! Didn't even think of that.

The external idea is also a good one; I might just dump the 1620 into one...

companies need to start making more sata optical drives

Very, very true...at least most of the Blu Ray drives are SATA...