Installation advice - replace my DVD ROM or my CD Writer?

[q1aqza]

Thinking of taking the plunge and get a DVD writer but I am not sure whether to replace mt CD writer or replace the DVD ROM (I have no spare IDE's left). I'm leaning toward keeping the CD Writer as it can write much CDs much faster than the Pioneer 104, but then I am concerned about clashes, particularly with Nero as my current version is bundled with the CD writer and won't work with another device and the Pioneer will come with it's own bundled version of Nero which I guess will have the same restriction.

I would like to hear if anyone else has had this dilemna and what they did and any lessons learned?

[smokingweed3000]

u could try to put the dvd burner in a firewire enclosure or what ever its called and connect it to yr pc like that. i dont think that the nero version that came with your burner can only work with your burner.

[bnbhoha]

You could get a a PCI adapter card for around $12-15 buck on ebay. This has two IDE ports which will allow you to hook up a total of four more devices. I just bought two from Staples for $10.50 each; they're on clearance and support the ATA 100 standard. As far as nero goes, get the latest update and it should work with all your drives; I believe 5.5.9.0 is out which provides better support for dvd writers. Good luck

[q1aqza]

bnbhoha

I didn't realise you could get PCI IDEs. Do they perform the same?

I'll look into what I can buy over here in the UK.

Thanks

[bnbhoha]

Yep they perform the same. Here's my story- a while back, I had an older computer (3 years old) which came with an ATA 33 hard drive. My hard drive crashed and the only hard drives that were in abundance were the ATA 100. My motherboard was not ATA 100 compatible so they came out with PCI Adapter cards that would let me plug my motherboard, or any other hardware device, using the ATA 100 standard(also backwards compatible with ATA 66, 33). They're basically plug n' play.

I bought the Maxtor Ultra ATA 100 PCI Adapter Card because my hard drive was Maxtor. You can find them cheap on ebay. They just came out with the ATA 133 hard drives, but from what I read it really doesn't matter because the computers at this time are only able to perform at ATA 66, even though ATA 100 has been out for a while. Confuse you yet? Anyways, your're not adding a hard drive so the above info is irrelevant to you. You can still ad any other IDE devices to these as well (like your dvd burner, cd burner, zip drive etc) but if you're going to ad an ATA 100 hard drive, make sure you buy the ATAT 100 IDE cable; my computer works much faster with the new hard drive. Good luck

search hints: promise controller card, or pci adapter card, or pci ide card etc.

[q1aqza]

Thanks for your advice, I'll start looking for one.