I wasn't sure where to put this. Under MBs' or under Storage if I had a choice so here it is. I'm a little new to SATA devices with this first optical drive.

A Samsung SH-S203 DVD burner for one of two systems. Either a Abit NF7-S V2 (nForce2 chipset w/ two SATA ports and two IDE headers) or a Foxconn N570SM2AA (nForce5 w/ six SATA ports and two IDE headers).

The Abit box has four IDE drives, two HDDs' and two optical. This new burner would replace the existing IDE burner, but I would still have one IDE player.

The Foxconn box (new) has three IDE drives; two HDDs' and a single burner.

Both had the SATA controler disabled in the bios.

Trying the Abit system first since this is my main system (the Foxconn will be hooked yp to a HDTV), I enables the SATA controller in the biuos, then loaded the separate SATA drivers without the optional GUI interface. Drive shows in Windows and I was able to do a burn with it.

My questions are;
1. I wasn't able to boot from that drive even after I changed the order of the drives in the bios. Is there something else that has to be done?
2. Since these appear to be considered SCSI type of drives by the bios and O/S, doesn't that make it an issue durning bootup?
3. The connectors appear to be somewhat fragile as compared to the IDE headers I've been use to for the past 8 years. Has there been problems with these by snaping them to the side when you insert them (at a right angle instead of straight in)?

I haven't tried the Foxconn box yet.

I know that some people have had problems booting to SATA Opticals but with a modern system it probably relates to some BIOS setting rather than anything to do with drivers. I belive that ACPI settings (http://kb.iu.edu/data/ahvl.html) can be one more obscure setting that can be important. SATA's did sit on a SCSI interface on early SATA boards (it was a quick way of implemating the chipsets) but unless using RAID for HDDs SATA devices should be capable of IDE/ATA emulation on modern systems.

Drivers are not important for IPL (Initial Program Loader) devices and all of that is BIOS controlled. A workaround if you cannot get the BIOS to boot the device is to try a boot manager - both SBM and BiNG could be worth a try - but even they require IPL devices enabled in the BIOS.

The connectors have been a design fault from the start but more due to the ease of becoming loose rather than snapping. Composite Power/Data connectors are just a little bit more "solid".

There is an option in the Bios that wasn't in the manual, but now I found another version of a similar manual does show it (but without a proper description, just as all the other entries are and have been over the years). The entry "SATA RAID ROM" needs to be enabled. Since I wasn't using RAID, especially considering this is a single optical; drive and I don't believe a single anything could possible be a RAID array, it was disabled.
Well, it needs to be enabled. It then produces a extra screen for the RAID controller (if needed). It will then boot from that SATA drive.

Nice result.
The entry "SATA RAID ROM" needs to be enabled. Since I wasn't using RAID, especially considering this is a single optical; drive and I don't believe a single anything could possible be a RAID array, it was disabled.
I guess that SATA RAID ROM implied RAID (as in HDD RAID) and would have been better written as SATA/RAID ROM maybe. SATA & RAID & SCSI are three terms with much overlap and diversity in usage - especially when it comes to BIOSes.

BIOS documentation sucks! :mad: Grammar errors, misspelled words, jargon misusage, bad menu designs, convoluted setting combos - I've seen them all! I have yet to see a BIOS that is "perfect" in this regard. They all have something wrong with them!

Not your fault you couldn't get it to work. ;) A poor design is the fault of the designer, not the user...

I have yet to see a BIOS that is "perfect" in this regard.I'm not looking for 'perfection' by all means. I don't have a problem with some typos, but gross ommission of text is another thing altogether. :mad:
A poor design is the fault of the designer, not the user...The problem are the Asians who import this stuff along with documentation that is printed over there, not here. When you approach the US sales dept., they just pass the buck saying the manual is printed here and they will e-mail your concern back to them. Big deal.

This hasen't changed in 8 years since I got my first PC.

This hasen't changed in 8 years since I got my first PC.No it hasn't. However, modern mobo BIOS'es have literally hundreds of settings! :eek: This wasn't true 8 years ago! It's getting to be a real problem.

Anyone know of decent speed tests that were done with similar drives; PATA vs SATA?

Here are some benchmarks for various PATA and SATA drives.
http://www23.tomshardware.com/storage.html

Interesting there is a drive w/ a 32MB cache just above one w/ 8MB. Also interesting is the Hitachi SATA & PATA drives next to one another.
So much for SATA being 'faster'.

Separate question;
I had a report that someone had problems xfering data from one PATA HDD to a SATA HDD. No details, but I don't believe any type of RAID was used.
Other than bad cable, bad controller, or bad MB or PS, anyone hear of problems??

So much for SATA being 'faster'.
Same PATAs could be faster than some SATAs but how many PATA's are in the top ten for sustained transfer speeds. Benchmarking is a crude tool to begin with and one is hardly ever comparing like with like when all the various parameters are included.

Never had any problems transferring from one interface to another. Individual drives could be problematic but that's not the fault of the interface. A large cache only affects certain types of performance such as read ahead type stuff.