SATA Optical Drive = BSOD?

If you have tried to install Windows using one of the new SATA optical drives, you may have gotten a BSOD (blue screen of death) during part of the install. This most likely is due to the fact you are installing with a SATA optical drive.

Why? Well, most motherboards have what is called the Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI). What this does is it allows software to communicate with SATA devices utilizing features that aren't native to parallel ATA, such as Native Command Queing. This is great for SATA hard drives, however, this can cause unwanted effects to optical drives. One possible solution is to disable AHCI in the bios. The only problems are the fact that 1) not all BIOS's allow you to disable it, and 2) this will limit your SATA hard drive from taking advantage of all its potential features.

In light of this, it is recommended to go ahead and stick with an IDE optical drive for now. Besides, it's not like the optical drive is going to max-out the IDE interface anyway. The only benefit of SATA for an optical drive is a thinner cable.