"Has anyone stopped and asked why we should bother putting SATA connections on optical drives in the first place?
Perhaps the reason there aren't very many SATA optical drives is that there isn't much of a demand for them from both the consumer's and the manufacturer's perspective.
Adding a SATA connection to an optical drive is more costly and is completely overkill for the data transfer rates of current optical drives. As for consumers, the majority of them don't need plug and play optical drives, and those who do regularly use existing USB 2.0 or Firewire connections; both of which are generally faster than IDE/ATA.
Basically, to put a point on it, CD and DVD drives aren't hindered by the IDE interface. Additionally, if you're running performance-sensitive apps, the extra load on the SATA controller is not very desirable if you have a raid or multiple HDDs running. Not to mention that plugging your optical drive into your SATA bus can slow everything else down when running resource intensive apps.
Think of it this way. Have you ever driven down a highway where the speed limit is 75 and the car in front of you is going 50? In light traffic, this isn't a problem, you just pass them. But when this happens in heavy rush-hour traffic, you can easily get stuck while people in other lanes constantly past you without letting you over. Your computer's SATA bus is like an 10 lane divided highway with a speed limit of 75 MPH. Plugging your optical drive into the SATA bus is like driving a car that can only do 55 MPH. This is fine when there's not much traffic from other devices, but when you get heavy traffic loads, it can slow everyone else down!
Basically, you don't really "need" SATA optical drives since current IDE/ATA connections are more than enough. You just want them really badly.
So, why add cost, complexity, and resource bottlenecks when the current tech works just fine?"
from "<a target=_blank class=ftalternatingbarlinklarge href="http://www.digg.com/hardware/Listen_up_manufactures,_we_need_SATA_optical_drives_already!">http://www.digg.com/hardware/L...s,_we_need_SATA_optical_drives_already!"</a>
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