Replacing Optical Drives and types.

[The Evil Overlord]

Hey guys.

I have a question.

(The plan was to replace my existing rig with a new one, but due to unforseen circumstances, this is no longer possible at this time)

I have an Asus M2N-SLi Deluxe mobo and ide ribbon optical drives.

They both need replacing. I've found suitable replacements for them, but, they are sata cable fittings.

My motherboard has room for them, but I don't know if I have to reposition the sata cables I'm currently occupying.

My C drive is in port sata 1 on the mobo, D on port 2 and E on 3.

Do I need to move them around to ports 3, 4, and 5 to free up ports 1 and 2 for the opticals?

I am genuinely asking as since building it, I have left it alone (apart from cleaning and applying fresh thermal compound)

If I do, will windows detect a hardware change due to the hard drives being moved?

(Apart from the obvious change of the optical drives)

If I don't need to, and windows will simply assign drive F and G to the opticals even after they're connected to ports 4 and 5, (then I was worrying over nothing)

Basically, I haven't had to replace opticals before so I'm just looking for a little advice.

Thanks for reading, I look forward to your replies.

[corrosive23]

Use whatever port you want. It doesn't matter with sata.

[The Evil Overlord]

Use whatever port you want. It doesn't matter with sata.

Great, thank you for replying. Would they still be recognised with the drive assignments I'm used to? (In my case F for the reader, G for the writer?)

(I had a feeling I might have been overthinking the whole thing)

[Ci7]

Great, thank you for replying. Would they still be recognised with the drive assignments I'm used to? (In my case F for the reader, G for the writer?)

(I had a feeling I might have been overthinking the whole thing)

 

windows would automatically assign the first free letter to the device go forward..

 

you could change reassign the letters as you see fit  in windows managment if you don't like how they are arranged 

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

I would suggest leaving the existing SATA drives plugged into their existing ports, just for the sake of convenience.  There's no need to re-cable them if you do not have to.

 

Regards,

 

Aryeh Goretsky