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Serial ATA CD-Rom Drives?

Posted by Cliff on from the when-will-the-market-catch-on dept.

OutRigged asks: "With Serial ATA hard drives starting to go mainstream, and being almost equal in price to their parallel equivalents, one would think we'd have Serial ATA CD-ROM drives by now. Yet wherever I look, all I see are PATA based CD-ROM drives. It's obvious that an optical drive will benefit little, if at all from using SATA, but why not switch for the sake of the cable size? CD-ROM drives are usually at the top of the case, and with the 1m limit in length, along with the small size of the cables, I see no reason not to use a Serial ATA interface in a CD-ROM drive."

2 of 70 comments (clear)

  1. bridge chips by uberhund2 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Most of the SATA hard drives are still just parallel ATA with a bridge chip to convert them to serial. I imagine that once manufacturers switch to native SATA hardware, the reduced costs will send SATA to CDs, DVDs, etc.

  2. IDE will never die... by Toxygen · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ...just ask your friendly neighbourhood floppy drive.