How should I hook this up?

[alphamini]

I'm building a system with a hard drive (obviously), a DVD burner, and a CD burner. My motherboard came with 1 parallel ATA cable and 2 SATA cables. I've heard I should do my hard drive on the parallel ATA and the optical drives on the SATA cables. Is this correct? I know SATA is a little faster, so I would actually want my hard drive on the SATA cable, but then I've heard that if I put two devices (such as my optical drives) on a parallel cable that I can only read/write to one at a time, which would make it impossible to do a direct copy of a disc. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[badmonkey]

SATA is only for hard drives it will not work for any optical drive, you have to have a compatible hard drive that has a SATA interface on it and these do not accept anything else. So unless you have a SATA drive you can't even use those SATA cables. Hope this helps.

 

[Yeti]

SATA is only for hard drives it will not work for any optical drive

No, there are SATA optical drives http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=27-131-328&depa=0

you have to have a compatible hard drive that has a SATA interface on it and these do not accept anything else. So unless you have a SATA drive you can't even use those SATA cables.

Not necessarily http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=22-998-001&depa=0 , though I wouldn't really recommend using one of those.

@alphamini - What kind of drives do you have? All PATA?

 

[badmonkey]

Wow, i havent seen one of those yet, thanks for showing me, and the sata to ide thing.....dont know about that tho

 

[Praetor]

I've heard I should do my hard drive on the parallel ATA and the optical drives on the SATA cables

Although it doesnt matter, convention is to have the HDDs on the Primary/Master channel and the optical drives on the Secondary/Slave channels (on PATA connections)

but then I've heard that if I put two devices (such as my optical drives) on a parallel cable that I can only read/write to one at a time

1. not true
2. what happens is that when you are accessing both devices on that cable simultaneously, the speed will the slower of the two

SATA is only for hard drives it will not work for any optical drive

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=27-131-351&depa=0

though I wouldn't really recommend using one of those.

hehe neither would i