2 optical drives – Y or N?

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I tried using 2 CD burners on a single system back in IDE days; regardless of the drives’ setup (master, slave etc) the OS always ended up confused.

Running Win 10, 64 bit & sata connectors for storage media is this resolved? Would an internal sata & an external usb be a better arrangement? Other arrangements?

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I tried using 2 CD burners on a single system back in IDE days; regardless of the drives’ setup (master, slave etc) the OS always ended up confused.

Running Win 10, 64 bit & sata connectors for storage media is this resolved? Would an internal sata & an external usb be a better arrangement? Other arrangements?

I have used 2 PATA ODDs in computers and now use 2 SATA ODDs in my Desktops. With the PATA the Master was always on the plug furthest from the motherboard so I got used to the first being in the top of the case with the second being just below it. With SATA I keep the same arrangement and plug the top drive’s data cable in the second port and the bottom drive’s data cable in the third port. Or if 2 HDDs the ODDs will be in the third and fourth ports.

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2 optical drives on a modern SATA system in AHCI mode should be no problem.

I’m thinking of getting a Blue Ray burner in addition the DVD drive I already have.

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Like ‘Berton’ said, it works.

And if you make a lot of CD/DVD’s, it’s helpful to burn them two at a time.

😎

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And you can copy directly from one DVD to another.

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I tried using 2 CD burners on a single system back in IDE days; regardless of the drives’ setup (master, slave etc) the OS always ended up confused.

Running Win 10, 64 bit & sata connectors for storage media is this resolved? Would an internal sata & an external usb be a better arrangement? Other arrangements?

My guess is that the jumpers were probably set incorrectly on the two drives, and that’s why the OS seemed to be confused.

I would much prefer two SATA internal drives over an internal and an external. Not only is everything neatly tucked inside of the computer, and out of the way; but also, you have less possibility of issues. Occasionally USB has issues, but I doubt that you would find any issues with SATA.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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I’m pretty sure that the speed of a SATA optical is going to be substantially better than a USB drive too.

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I’m pretty sure that the speed of a SATA optical is going to be substantially better than a USB drive too.

Certainly not if one is talking SATAII vs USB 3.0 and perhaps for SATAIII as well.

:cheers:

🍻

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Certainly not if one is talking SATAII vs USB 3.0 and perhaps for SATAIII as well.

Ummm. SATA I runs at 1.5 Gb/sec. SATA II runs at 3 Gb/sec. SATA III runs at 6 Gb/sec.

USB 1.x runs at 12 Mb/sec. (maximum). USB 2 runs at 480 Mb/sec. (maximum). USB 3 runs at 5 Gb/sec. (maximum).

These are all wirespeed measures and do not reflect throughput. Having said that, SATA is designed for internal case connectivity, so it routinely achieves excellent throughput. USB is designed for external connectivity and compatibility and is notorious for slowdowns for all kinds of reasons.

There is a reason that no one uses a USB connected hard drive as their primary boot device. When it’s done at all it’s always as an exception.

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Only USB3/3.1 can get close to the speed of a decent SSD on SATA3. I can’t recall an equivalent test that also uses optical drives to reference offhand, has there been a recent one?

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Optical drives peel off reads at about 50MBps (from my memory) whether the modern IDE (ATA/66) or SATA. The drive is limited by how fast it can read off the disk not those interfaces. And too fast and the disk disintegrates. So this is a physical limitation, and depending upon the decoding faster on the outside of the disk versus the inside.

USB3 ought to be able to keep up. In theory (actually in theory USB2 can keep up). In real world USB3 is way under its ostensible transmission bit rates. But how much I don’t have a good test reference. I know the practical limit was estimated to be 400MBps, more than enough to keep up if it can be achieved.

I agree a SATA connection (even SATA 1.5Gbps) is going to readily keep up. Not sure about USB3 and other than ASUS’ flaky (pre-ratified standard) 3.1 haven’t seen a good report on real work bit rate for 3.1. I would assume it would be pretty close to 50MBps.

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I recently had to back up a system to an external hard drive over a USB 2 interface. It took hours and was not a fun experience. The relevance here is the slow I/O interface that USB imposes. eSATA is a much better choice if you can get it.

I’d also note that DVD optical drives are an old technology. Blu-Ray is the current gen tech and there’s now talk of a 4K optical drive. As each video generation arrives the base data rate those drives are expected to support, increases:

CD: 150 Kb/Sec.
DVD: 1.32 Mb/Sec.
Blu-Ray: 4.29 Mb/Sec.
4K Blu-Ray: 82-128 Mb/Sec.

Frankly though, that last set of numbers is suspect. Though the source seems reliable (C/Net), there’s something wrong. 4K video does not have that high of a multiple of pixels to accommodate versus 1080p Blu-Ray (the actual number is about 4x). And the 4K standard uses a better codec than Blu-Ray too. Therefore I suspect that the numbers the C/Net article are giving are after the codec has decompressed the data stream.

4K Blu-ray discs arriving in 2015 to fight streaming media

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Since DVD ROM Drives are no longer available, I now have two Burners in my computer. SATA drives do not have the same problem that ancient PATA drives possess. Therefore, two optical drives will be no problem.

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“Ancient” PATA drives don’t have a problem if they are configured correctly.

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