Optical Drive question!

Elmidena

I recently spent a small fortune building a new pc and intended on using my old DVD drive, but then discovered my mobo doesn't support IDE drives. I just wondered if it's possible at all to work around this somehow? I don't burn discs and only use the drive to install pc games basically, and would like to avoid having to buy a SATA drive if possible as quite broke!

I have a non-gaming laptop (ie very basic) which has a drive, so I wonder if I install a game on that and save to an external will that transfer across ok to the new pc, or will licenses and whatnot be corrupt? The laptop doesn't have a hope in hell of running any of the games I want to install (Civ 5, Starcraft II etc) so not sure how this'll work really, hence hoping to somehow install to external and copy the files down the line.

Not sure if the discs'll even launch in laptop as I said it's basic, so if that doesn't work is it possible to copy the contents of the disc and click an install .exe on new pc? I own the games legitimately and don't want to have any kind of piracy screwup but theoretically I don't see why copying the contents wouldn't work, unless there's some encryption on it. Not brave enough to check it out without asking ye first though!

Any suggestions/input are more than welcomed!

Krusader

Something like this maybe

http://www.lindy.ie/sata-converter-for-ide-drives/51020.html

edit: looking at that it's not SATA II

Big Lar

You could convert cd/dvd to an ISO image on your laptop, copy that image to a USB then mount it onto a virtual drive on your PC

Big Lar

Convert image to ISO http://en.softonic.com/s/iso-converter

Mount virtual drive http://www.slysoft.com/en/virtual-clonedrive.html

Elmidena

Cheers for the speedy replies, will give it a go and let you know how I get on! Out of curiosity, does it have to be a USB drive or will an external do? The only USB drive I have is 4gb and don't think that'll handle the size of some of the things I want to install. It's been a long time since I mounted with ISOs so brain's a bit rusty, think the last time was a game three years ago =s

Big Lar

Sunshine! wrote: »

Cheers for the speedy replies, will give it a go and let you know how I get on! Out of curiosity, does it have to be a USB drive or will an external do? The only USB drive I have is 4gb and don't think that'll handle the size of some of the things I want to install. It's been a long time since I mounted with ISOs so brain's a bit rusty, think the last time was a game three years ago =s

External is fine, all you are doing is transferring a file to your PC.

Elmidena

I feel I owe you a pint for you saving me the cost of a new drive:D

Krusader

http://www.elara.ie/productdetail.aspx?productcode=ECE2196065

You'd get a new drive for €20

bonzodog2

A while ago komplett had SATA dvdrw drives for e17

Or you could share the drive of the old machine across a network

[edit] or you could get an IDE/USB adapter, turning the old drive into an external

Elmidena

bonzodog2 wrote: »

A while ago komplett had SATA dvdrw drives for e17

Or you could share the drive of the old machine across a network

[edit] or you could get an IDE/USB adapter, turning the old drive into an external

I never knew such a thing existed, are they expensive do you know? As I said I don't use the drive bar once in a blue moon, but to have the option of using it as an external is a neat little idea I must say!

bonzodog2

this one on ebay is 6.90+2.60 GBP

You can also get external enclosures to take laptop optical drives.

Fluffy88

I would recommend using the drive on your laptop and share it on the network. Very simple to do and works quite well, it will be slower though as all the data has to be sent over the network.

It's simple to do and windows has it built-in, just google it or this article should help,
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308582

It would be quicker than doing the mounting images way and cheaper than the rest. Of course you need to have a network to do it on


And if you want, there is IDE to SATA connections available, but it's probably just as cheap to buy a new SATA drive as they are cheap.