Any point having more than one optical drive?

I've currently got a CD-RW and a DVD-ROM. I'm getting a DVD-RW. I never use both current drives at the same time and can't really think of any reason that I would, except if I wanted to burn two things at once or on the fly, neither of which I do.

Are there any other reasons you guys have for having say a DVD-ROM and a DVD-RW working together? The main reason I want to get rid of one is cause I'm upgrading my system and want to keep an IDE drive for backup / storage. Most new mobos I believe only come able to support two IDE drives max, optical or otherwise, so I'd need to restrict myself to one DVD-RW and one IDE HDD.

If necessary I could buy an IDE controller or SATA adaptor but I also want to keep things to a minimum in my case.

What I'm mainly getting at was can DVD-RW drives read DVD data equally as well as DVD-ROM drives? If the answer to that is yes and nobody can think of any other reason that I might need two optical drives, then I'll ditch the DVD-ROM. I'm also trying to think if there are any circumstances under which I might be forced to burn on the fly e.g. if the file in question could not be ripped onto the hard drive for any reason?

You don't need the ROM drive, but sometimes it is good to have a backup drive incase the other one messes up. I have two in mine and I only really use the writer for writing and the ROM for...ROMming (:P) This is because quite often I've found that some discs that have been written don't always pickup as having data on in the rewritable drives, but I use a lot of different dvds etc.

Generally speaking I'm sure you will only need the writer. :)

FinalD

PS. Seen this thread on OcUK posted on it too (InvG)

1:1 copying and leaving game CD's in the second drive constantly. BF2 hasn't left my spare drive since I built the system :P

Some CD drive seem to rip faster on CDs, but apart from that, ditch it.

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Originally Posted by chuckskull

1:1 copying and leaving game CD's in the second drive constantly. BF2 hasn't left my spare drive since I built the system :P

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2nd on the BF2 front :) leaves the other drive free for other games/stuff

I used to use my DVD reader as a BF2 case, but my uni doesn't allow any internet games, so all ports are locked, so I can't :(

FinalD

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Originally Posted by FInalD

I used to use my DVD reader as a BF2 case, but my uni doesn't allow any internet games, so all ports are locked, so I can't :(

FinalD

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Now that is harsh.

Thanks for the comments guys. I think I\'ll leave it in there but move it back so you can\'t see it all the time. It\'s beige and spoiling the look of my black case, as is my floppy drive :embarrassed:

Use the dvd-rom to take the reading jobs, saves the dvd-rw. You might run into problems trying to burn from a pci/ide card.

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Originally Posted by Robbie G

Now that is harsh.

Thanks for the comments guys. I think I'll leave it in there but move it back so you can't see it all the time. It's beige and spoiling the look of my black case, as is my floppy drive :embarrassed:

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If it's beige dump it. dont care if it's the fastest drive in the world :P

Hmm, you could always spray it (utterly invalidating any warranty however) to match the case?