SATA hard drives are nearly omnipresent in desktops built today. More boards are coming with only a single parallel port, but often offering 4 or more SATA ports. As PATA is phased out little by little, it's only natural that eventually optical drives will join their magnetic brethren. While SATA adoption for opticals has been a lot slower than for HDD, it is there, and now some manufacturers are predicting that by the end of this year, SATA opticals will displace PATA. Increasing shipment requests for SATA opticals is the key, with many vendors no longer wanting to use the older models:
Many international OEM/ODM clients have requested for use of SATA in place of ATAPI for new DVD-ROM drive and/or DVD burner models sent for product certification over the past four months, the sources pointed out. As a result, the total shipment volume of SATA DVD-ROM drives and DVD burners is likely to exceed that of ATAPI models in the second half of the year, the sources indicated.
For the enthusiast, interestingly enough, they are not making claim. The primary reason behind this is price, with SATA opticals often coming at a price premium as high as 30% with no performance advantage. In that case, adoption may take longer. Eventually, though, those IDE connectors will up and disappear. Perhaps sooner rather than later.
Judging by how quickly SATA has been picked up, it wouldn't surprise me to see the standard floppy connector outlast the IDE connector, due to it often being used for BIOS updates and pre-install drivers.