What is a sata cd-rom drive?

Question

My old cd-rom drive has crapped out and I'm looking into buying a new one (fairly cheap, if possible). Any suggestions?

Answer 1

S-ATA stands for Serial ATA. It requires it's own type of connector and doesn't work with IDE connections, so you'd need an adapter --or an S-ATA controller card or a motherboard that supports that technology. S-ATA is reportedly on par, if not better than SCSI for high-throughput drives.