Is there a "Standard Length" for optical drives?

[MercenaryForHire]

Seriously. I can't put more than two optical drives in either my sister's or dad's computer because the drive itself bumps into the bloody motherboard or a jutting component (RAM, cap, etc).

Is there a "Normal Length" for these, and/or a way to buy "Short Drives"?

- M4H

 

[Trey22]

Sony, TDK (both of which I think are Liteon drives) and Liteon make short length optical drives

What type of drive are you looking for?

 

[wseyller]

Or you could get a difference case thats bigger that will allow more room between the motherboard and drives.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Why would you need more than 2?

 

[Zepper]

The only real standard is for width and thickness, not length. But there are shorter drives. Some LiteOns and rebadged as mentioned above and Optorite and rebadged. I really like my MSI X48 (Combo drive) which has a short chassis - the X52 is current now and it is short too - don't know about their DVD burners.
. There may be others, but these are the ones I'm aware of.
.bh.

 

[Demon-Xanth]

There is a max length, which most manufacturers default to. But yeah, I know what you're talking about. It's hard to find a case with a complete set of usable 5.25" bays when a full ATX board is used. That's actually why I have the case I do. I ran what could have been called the ultimate SCSI optical drive setup (for 2001) consisting of a Plextor 40TSI, Yamaha 2100SZ, and Pioneer DVD-305S. I think I spent three days looking for a case that could have all of those coexist with an Epox 8KTA3. I eventually found one by checking the depth dimension and looking at inside pictures. The case I ended up with had all three drivebays at the power supply level and above, but other candidates were cases that were an extra 2-3" in depth.

 

[MercenaryForHire]

Thanks Trey22 - the LiteOn suggestion worked great. They carry all types of 170mm drives.

wseyller / n0cmonkey - it's because the drive is going into this case and therefore can only be a certain length (plus cable+power) in order to not bump into the RAM.

Thanks for all the help.

- M4H