Saturday, March 09, 2013

You Can Use A Serial ATA Cable, With Power Adapter, To Convert Your Pre 2009 Mac Pro From The Internal IDE Optical Drive Interface To The Internal Serial ATA Optical Drive Interface

You can use a Serial ATA Cable, with Power Adapter, to convert your pre 2009 Mac Pro from the internal IDE optical drive interface to the internal Serial ATA optical drive interface, which will allow you to use any SATA Internal DVD+/-RW Drive.  This transition is necessary when it comes time to replace your IDE internal optical drive in your pre 2009 Mac Pro because all of the new IDE optical drives are completely depleted from the marketplace.

If you own a 2009-2012 Mac Pro, your computer is already using the Serial ATA optical drive interface and you can replace your drive with a new SATA Internal DVD+/-RW Drive without needing to install a Serial ATA Cable, with Power Adapter.

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Internal IDE Replacement DVD-R/CD-R Drives Completely Removed From The Marketplace

It looks like new internal IDE replacement DVD-RW/CD-RW drives have been completely removed from the marketplace. Now, the only internal DVD-RW/CD-RW drives that OWC sells, that have IDE compatibility, is the Internal Blu-ray/DVD/CD Writer and it will cost me $87 instead of $25.
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/LG/WH14NS40MP/
Refurbished Blu-ray Players, for home theater, are now as affordable as cheap DVD players and an internal optical drive replacement on my 2007 Mac Pro will force me to get a DVD/CD/Writer that also reads and writes with Blu-ray disks.
It looks like the Blu-ray transition is coming full-circle.
If you have a 2009-2010 Mac Pro, there are still plenty of new SATA DVD-RW/CD-RW drives in the $25 range. 
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/LG/GH24NS95/
Just the 2006-2008 Mac Pros have few optical drive options because of the antiquated IDE interface in the optical drive bays.
My 2007 Mac Pro is starting to look old because it is. ;-)
Addendum: Larry from OWC, sent me this email note and URL:
This kit:
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Pioneer/BDC207DBKMP/
gets you Blu-Ray Reader + DVDRW/DL CDRW multi for $55 if you don't need to write Blu-Ray.