Converting IDE Lightscribe to SATA drive

Hi! New member here. Have question about my CD/DVD drives. I have a DELL with Vista and wanted to switch out one of my drives for a Lightscribe so that I could, obviously, write on my own DVDs/CDs. But when I took the back off my computer (a gutsy move on my newbie part I'll say), I saw that the drive I took out and the other one both connected via a SATA. The Lightscribe has a 4 prong power cable, a 40 prong IDE, a slave/master connection which I read I should set to Master, a 4 prong analog audio and a 2 prong digital audio. The one I took out has flat connections called SATA power and SATA signal.
I know I described the above as if you didn't know it but maybe if you can help me then someone else can get the same rudimentary help here.
Thanks so much for any help!

 

Since new DVD Lightscribe burners are so cheap now, I would recommend buying a new SATA DVD burner. But.... did you look at the motherboard to see if there's an IDE connector? It's pretty rare for a motherboard to have only SATA connectors and not at least one IDE connector. But, leave it to Dell to not include an IDE connector on their motherboards. If you just bought the IDE burner, return/exchange it for a SATA burner. If that's not possible, you can buy IDE-to-SATA adapters, but I think they cost about the same as a new SATA DVD burner.
Here's some adatpers:
http://www.cooldrives.com/sata-adapters.html
Here's a new SATA DVDRW with Lightscribe:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827136153
Notice the prices are about the same, with the adapters being a MUCH bigger hassle (trust me, I've used several different adapters; they work, but can be troublesome)

Good luck! Let us know what you choose! And welcome to Major Geeks! :wave :major

[dlb]

 

Great idea! I went ahead and bought it and paid the bigtime $2.99 for "rush delivery"! I'm happy because you wouldn't believe what I paid for this other Lightscribe that caused me the trouble in the first place so this is definitely the better option that you suggested, rather than try to become an overnight computer engineer!

Thanks so much! I'll be back!

 

Glad I could help. Buying the new burner was definitely the wisest course of action. If you still have the IDE burner, you can give it to a friend for XMas, or pop it into an external enclosure for use on other PCs (take a look here).

:-D