So am I to understand that ALL cd drives use EIDE interface. I'm looking to buy a DVD/RW and I'm lost on the difference between the 2. I have a dimension 3000 and just wondering if I need specifically an IDE or an EIDE. Ebay listings show very few IDE interfaced DVD drives but tons and tons of EIDE drives. Don't want to waste money on the wrong one.

If you need either one get either one.

My DVD-RW is SATA, so they're not only IDE or EIDE.

Thanks for confusing me even more, SATA, wtf. Screw this, i'm gonna buy an underive pully for my truck, that I know what to buy and install.

Look up and see if you have a local CPU store near you...Yeah, they're called CPU. They're cheap and guarantee their shit for 5 years. Ask them!

I went through this whole confusion a couple of months ago. Just worry about whether it's ATA or SATA. I think ATA and IDE are the same thing. The cable looks like this and usually plugs into the back of all DVD/CD roms http://imgsrv.worldstart.com/ct-images/part20.jpg

Older Harddrives use the same connection, but most of the newer ones connect to SATA, and instead of using that big ass cable, plug into this http://sierra-cables.com/SATA/Images/SA ... able-1.jpg
Very few CD/DVD roms are used to connect to SATA from what I've looked up.

If you're still confused just read this from Wikipedia.

An early version of the specification, conceived by Western Digital in 1986, was commonly known as Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE) due to the drive controller being contained on the drive itself as opposed to the then-common configuration of a separate controller connected to the computer's motherboard — thus making the interface on the motherboard a host adapter, though many people continue, by habit, to call it a controller.

Enhanced IDE (EIDE) — an extension to the original ATA standard again developed by Western Digital — allowed the support of drives having a storage capacity larger than 504 MiB (528 MB), up to 7.8 GiB (8.4 GB). Although these new names originated in branding convention and not as an official standard, the terms IDE and EIDE often appear as if interchangeable with ATA. This may be attributed to the two technologies being introduced with the same consumable devices — these "new" ATA hard drives. [1]

With the introduction of Serial ATA around 2003, conventional ATA was retroactively renamed to Parallel ATA (P-ATA), referring to the method in which data travels over wires in this interface.

Bawy, donechoo take that valley girl tone with me.

Start> Control Panel> System> Hardware> Device Manager

Find out the hard disk adapter.

If it's a Dell Dimension 3000, you'll probably want an IDE regularrrrrrr.

Not valley girl tone, just normal come to bed and snuggle tone.
Yer so smart, lets secks!

How about you butthump your PC until it works.

I hear it works better if you receive.

Oddly enough I have a Dimension 3000 manual lying around. This one says it's IDE.

<- Works for Dell but doesn't know anything about our desktops.

I looked into it for you, though.

They're ATA (specifically ATA100), which is commonly referred to as "IDE."

So yeah, an IDE one will work fine.

Good stuff, thanks fags. I guess I'll spend some money.