Swapped my IDE DVD/RW for a SATA one :)

[spikey_richie]

My fiancee's uncle bought a cheap (£35 reduced to £15) Samsung DVD combo drive from Play.com a few weeks ago, not realizing he can't use SATA. So I did a deal with him, and straight swapped my Sony DVD combo IDE drive for his SATA drive.

Not only do I now have more IDE bus slots for older HDD's, but I have a drive which is ~10% faster

Need to rip a CD into iTunes and burn a DVD to see if I can notice the difference, but so far so good

[vaughan]

Yes they are good and prices have dropped to same as or very close to that of the IDE versions. The SATA cable is narrower than the IDE cable and permits better airflow within the PC's case too. Most new motherboards have lots of SATA connections.

[spikey_richie]

Yup, I have 8 on my mobo. I have some swish IDE cables which are encased in a tube, so they're not as wide and restrictive as flat cables.

[Frederic Brillouet]

I have a sata dvd writer and a sata dvd reader in my new amd system and another sata writer in my intel system. havent really noticed a difference, but the cables are really convenient!