SATA optical drives

Richard Dower

Has anyone made the move yet or planning to?, i have decided to give them a shot. So i ordered a Plextor 712SA for €50

I'll try it on the nForce4 controller and then the Silicon Image 3114 controller, god willing i'll be able to boot from the drive and install Windows etc.
Give it a shot....i know there's alot of incompatiable controllers/mobo's out there.

Just like the idea of getting rid of all IDE devices and going 100& SATA, though sadly you still need a floppy drive :rolleyes:

gline

Richard Dower wrote:

Has anyone made the move yet or planning to?, i have decided to give them a shot. So i ordered a Plextor 712SA for €50

I'll try it on the nForce4 controller and then the Silicon Image 3114 controller, god willing i'll be able to boot from the drive and install Windows etc.
Give it a shot....i know there's alot of incompatiable controllers/mobo's out there.

Just like the idea of getting rid of all IDE devices and going 100& SATA, though sadly you still need a floppy drive :rolleyes:

can u get usb floppy drives? plug it in when u need it :rolleyes: (which is only usually for bios/firmware updates and installing windows (sata drivers))

Richard Dower

That's a good idea gline, USB floppy on my want list!

The Real B-man

Richard Dower wrote:

Has anyone made the move yet or planning to?, i have decided to give them a shot. So i ordered a Plextor 712SA for €50

I'll try it on the nForce4 controller and then the Silicon Image 3114 controller, god willing i'll be able to boot from the drive and install Windows etc.
Give it a shot....i know there's alot of incompatiable controllers/mobo's out there.

Just like the idea of getting rid of all IDE devices and going 100& SATA, though sadly you still need a floppy drive :rolleyes:

You are now officially the Boards.ie SATA Nerd

gline

small question a bit off topic sorry

is it ok 2 run 4 x raptors in raid 0 if 2 have a different firmware

2 drives have 1 type and 2 have another type, seem to be running fine though, will it cause any problems?

DemonOfTheFall

You don't even need a floppy drive Richard if you slipstream your drivers onto your windows disc with a tool such as nLite www.nliteos.com

Richard Dower

I find slipstreaming rather difficult, tried it a few times and *****ed (Battlestar Galactica fans) it up. Gline, firmware revision was something i really read up on before get the four new FLC0 Raptors.

It's luck of the draw when ordering, i was lucky in that all four drives were from the same batch and made on the same day, November 25th 2005.

There is no real harm in running drives with different firmware but i guess they'll run as slow as the drives with a less mature firmware. FLC0 drives are the current firmware and i have read reviews that they perform best and faster over drives such as the original FLA0 drives, a later revision has FLA1 and then FLA2.

I wanted the latest revision for obvious reasons and for compatialibity also, it's always best to have drives of the same firmware and model etc.

unkel

DemonOfTheFall wrote:

You don't even need a floppy drive Richard if you slipstream your drivers onto your windows disc with a tool such as nLite www.nliteos.com

nLite is sweet, but slipstreaming doesn't remove the need to boot from removable media for BIOS upgrades, diagnostics, etc.

No need for a floppy though, it's much superior to use a bootable USB stick. Remember they now are just about €7.99 for a 128MB one. Fits Hiren's BootCD too with plenty of space left :cool: