question on disabling cd-rom drive(s)

[katuuuz]

Hey guys.  Once my PC is ready to go into my cab, I wont have use for my cd and DVD drives.  If I disable them in device manager, I can use the power connectors to them to free up power and use for fans.  This would be ok and wouldn't cause errors in windows 7 right?

[DaOld Man]

Should be able to unplug power connector and the IDE ribbon, or Sata connector on each.
You may have to go into PC BIOS to set them as "None" if BIOS is not already set up for auto detect. (It most likely is set for auto).

[burn_654]

It's been my experience that you want to unplug both the power and data connection. Unplugging just the power likely won't have a problem in Windows but it can cause longer boot times in the bios when it 'thinks' it's detecting a drive it can boot from, but can't get info from it (due to not being powered up.) I definitely had this with an extra hard drive I unplugged power from, even though the bios was not set to boot from it, the bootup drive detection process took much much longer because it was trying to find that drive still.

That could be dependent on the motherboard however.

[katuuuz]

Thanks guys, wasn't sure if I had to disable like in device drivers or whatever.  Sounds easy enough, will report back if I have any issues at that stage of the game.

[DeLuSioNal29]

Should be OK if you unplug the connector from the MB side and the power from the drive.