SATA VS PATA Optical Drives

Currently, I have 3 optical drives installed in my primary rig, and never paid too much attention, until now, because I have been doing a lot of work with all 3. The PATA is a Samsung SH-S202N, and the SATA are both LGs. All 3 seem to perform about the same, once a disk is actually running, but the Samsung consistently takes a lot longer for Windows to see, and frequently I have to run it more than once to get that to happen at all.

It is as though the signal coming from the Samsung is weaker than the LGs, and I'm wondering if this is due to brand quality, or is simply a trait of all PATAs, compared to SATAs? It is not as though I haven't had experience with other PATAs before, but I just didn't pay much attention, until now.

Same thing happened to me last night, i have 2 DVD Burners, 1 SATA and 1 IDE, i was burning simultaneously 2 DVDs with the same content and i did notice that the SATA finished first, even though i started the IDE first... i don't know if it is because of the brand or the quality, but i'm leaning towards the connection, i guess SATA is somehow "faster" not sure though..

IDE: Lite-On
SATA: LG

I was burning at the same speeds (4x), who knows? hehe..

Ohh awesome.... so SATA is faster than PATA, didn't know it applies to Optical Drives also..

Thanks, Shawn

I was somewhat aware of the benefits of SATA, in regards to hard drives, but never thought in those terms with optical drives. Since there are 3 types of SATA hard drives now, is there any difference of this sort with SATA optical drives? The best that I recall, no optical drives are specified via SATA I, II or III...are they?

Even though the responses given seem to address the aspect of signal strength and it's effect actually being transmitted and used, my question was not in that vein, because I had not noticed a performance increase while encoding DVDs, where that I can measure in terms of FPS, but only in terms of recognition, but I guess the two go hand in hand.

I originally resented the fact that many new motherboards only had one IDE connector, instead of two, but considering this, I guess that I really don't need two anyway. I have already abandoned PATA hard drives, and now I might do the same with optical drives.

Yeah that's what i thought, because i was burning at the same speeds in both Drives, with the same discs, the same files.. and the SATA finished first