I tried to search for this, but every search I try tends to exclude a word that I entered... So I'll just ask.

I've got a BenQ DW1655 burner at the moment. It still works great, but I'm upgrading my board and chip and want to eliminate PATA from my system.

Unfortunately, I can't seem to find a definitive answer as to a drive that works as well with DVD+R as the 1655, especially since BenQ sold off their optical division and the chipset powering the 1655 seems to have disappeared.

So, what do you guys think?

Which DVD+R discs are you referring to? All drives have their strengths and weaknesses with particular makes of disc. If you are using a particular make of DVD+R disc then there may be a drive that is especially good for those discs. If you haven't already done so have a look through the CDFreaks reviews, the hard working reviewers test each drive with a range of different discs. The relevent CDFreaks blank media forum is also worth a look.

The Optiarc AD-720x series are excellent all rounders and are probably the most frequently recommended drive in recent months (not the AD-7220 series). They can also be found rebadged as Sony. The second most recommended recent drive would probably be a Pioneer (can't remember the model numbers). Certain LG drives are also highly regarded. Even Lite-On drives have their fans (although I am not one) and can be excellent DVD writers, but as with all drives it depends on which make of disc you are using.

My favorite all rounders are the 20x Samsungs (SH-S202/3) which were the most frequently recommended drives before the Optiarc AD-7200. Sadly these have been replaced by the 22x SH-S222/3 series which do not look as good. At the moment though (here in the UK) there are still plenty of SH-S202/3 to be found.

The Samsungs has the advantage of being a decent DVD quality scanner and an excellent CD reader & writer (always useful to have). The Pioneers and LGs cannot scan and Optiarcs are traditionally not considered reliable scanners (although the AD-7200 look like an improvement). Lite-On drives are generally regarded as the best DVD scanners currently available.

All of these drives are available in SATA versions; for the Samsungs look for a 203 models and for the Optiarcs look for an "S" on the end of the model name (I'm not up to date on the others).

Nexperia based Benq drives are gone for good. But if you wished to keep your Benq then you could use a PATA controller card or PATA to SATA bridge. But do your research first, some controller chips don't support optical drives properly and those that do may need to be flashed to a non-RAID BIOS first. If you really don't want to keep you Benq I could give it a good home.

Thanks. I'm currently burning with a spindle of Verbatim DVD+R disks that I got a couple years ago and I have a whole bunch of them still. I don't do a lot of burning but when I burn I want it to be good since I may play the disks in one of many DVD players or computers.

I also burn some music disks as well. I've seen that LiteOn seems to be a little weak in that area.

The new board I'm getting will still have PATA, but I'd rather reduce the blockage of airflow that would be caused by a cable going across the entire case. Going all SATA would allow me to really clean up the case.

As far as scanning goes... I don't do that, really. I just burn disks and use them.

Which MID are the Verbatims (e.g. MCC004 or Taiyo Yuden T03 for 16x speed discs)? If they are MCC004 or T03 most recent drives will do a good job and you may prefer to chose a drive based on other features.

I assume you mean audio CDs, CD-R discs are not a strong point for Lite-Ons these days.

I rate my 20x Samsung extremely highly for CD writing. I can put a Verbatim Pastel (Taiyo Yuden) disc in it, write it at 32x and be certain of getting a disc with very low jitter and no unwanted C2 errors. It is also does a good job with Verbatim AZO discs, many drives in recent years don't seem to suit these discs. The only thing I don't like is that when writing multiple sessions on a CD there are C2 errors at the session boundaries, a feature of Mediatek based drives. These errors are in the session lead-in/-out, not the actual data, but they may cause problems if you write audio CDs in track at once mode. The 22x Samsungs seem to have a fundemental problem writing CD-R discs, as far as I know this has not been solved with firmware updates.

I also have an Optiarc AD-7200A. While it is still a very good CD writer, it is not quite as good as the Samsung. But while jitter and BLER are always a bit higher none of my CD players can tell the difference (we really can get very picky about writing quality ). But it does seem to write multi-session CDs properly.

Some LG drives (the Renesas based ones I think) have a reputation for being superb CD writers, possibly even better than the Samsung. I cannot comment personally as I haven't owned an LG for 3 years. I have never owned a Pioneer DVD writer but some rate their recent drives very highly.

If you do a lot of secure extraction from damaged audio CDs then the Samsung would be the best choice; it reads damaged discs well, has reliable C2 reporting and does not cache audio data. The Optiarc also has good C2 reporting and doesn't cache (maybe just a little bit), but its ability to read damaged CDs is not good. I believe that all current LG & Pioneer drives do not report C2 errors and cache audio data. If your Lite-On drive is not too old then it may be good at reading damaged CDs. My 3 year old Sony DW-G120 (a Lite-On rebadge) was pretty good, had quite good C2 reporting and the audio caching could be reliably overcome using the FUA command.

A SATA to PATA bridge is a small board that plugs into the back of the PATA drive and is then connected to the motherboard with a SATA cable. So you might be able to keep your Benq and still have a tidy case. Everything is done in hardware so there are no drivers to install.

I have never used one and there doesn't seem to have been much said about them on CDFreaks, but at <£10 it might be worth a try. One that uses a Silicon Image chip might be preferable, PCI cards their controller chips are the prefered choice for using with optical drives. Failing that look for one that specifically mentions ATAPI devices.

An alternative would be to use a USB to PATA bridge, but these are usually designed to connect to external USB sockets not the pin headers on motherboards (although you can get adapters). You may also experience problems writing DVDs at 16x speed. Finally you could consider using an external USB case. For any sort of USB bridge do some research first, many of the controller chips used do not work well with optical dives.