I'm buying a CD burner....

Eddie N

Eddie N

10 Inch Member
avoid phillips and hewlett packard cd-burners.. they have a class action law suit against them for thier burners dying too soon..

i have an ide magicwriter 4x4x24 cd-rw using nero and have never made a coaster.. but of course , i always do a simulation first to be sure , unless im burning a cd-rw because then it doesnt really matter..

i do hear lots of good things about the yamaha burners though..

- eddie -
 
Firstly, IDE or SCSI? SCSI means more money yeah, cos I'll have to buy a SCSI controller too? Pros & Cons?

In general what brands should I go for and what brands should I stay well away from?

I've seen a nice Sony CRX140s 32x8x4 SCSI that is just within my budget. Any opinions? It's just that I kinda trust Sony products over other brands.

Thanks in advance for any tips :)
 
I'd stay away from Sony on anything execpt maybe a TV set. Whether you go SCSI or IDE, the best is YAMAHA. If you plan on duping Audio CDs and/or backing up Software, you'll kick yourself later if you don't buy a unit that is able to copy encoded error blocks.
It's the trend in piracy protection. I believe Plextor handles them too . . not sure.

Another thing is Speed . . . If you mostly plan on using it to make single copies of data & audio CDs, copy speed is dependent on 1) you copying the data to your hard drive first or, 2 )burning a copy at a low enough speed so your source CD-Rom can keep up. To
me, for a single copy, I burn at 2X. Why copy something to my hard drive for one copy when it takes just as much time as burning at 2X ?
You want to save money . . . by a year old 4x4x16 Yamaha off ebay. They are going for around $150 and are great drives.

Regards,
PAPicker


[This message has been edited by PAPicker (edited 03-15-2000).]
 
Cooperman,

I've never had ANY dramas with Sony CD-ROM drives (don't have any Sony burners), and I've got eight of them in my office, so if they were dodgy, I probably would have got one by now.

RE the SCSI/IDE option - one of the side effects about getting a SCSI burner (which aren't too much more than IDE in price) is that you have to get a SCSI controller, so in the future, getting SCSI HDDs instead of IDE seems more attractive/feasible...

I've got a no-name type burner (i think it may have been a matsushita drive in a previous life) which does two speed recording - never had a drama. Like PAPicker said, if you're only going to cut the odd CD, and not do a run of 500 CD's for a mate, then 2 or 4 speed writing is probably sufficient.

A mate of mine reckons that the SCSI drives tend to be more stable though, with less dodgy disks cos tha data transfer doesn't falter as much or something - and I take his word for it - he maintains something like 300 machines for a living (poor bastard).

- gaffa
 
IDE vs. SCSI CD-R:
--------------------
SCSI CD-R drives always work well, even on slow computer systems becasue of SCSI's superior performance capabilities in a multi-tasking environment.

IDE CD-R drives work best on "fast" systems. To achieve the highest level of success with IDE CD-R drives, you must have the CD-R drive on its own IDE channel and have a "fast" computer system to overcome whatever task-switching speed problems you might encounter during normal operations. An IDE CD-R drive with a large buffer (2MB) is basically a must.


CD-R MANUFACTURERS:
--------------------
The best CD-R (actually CD-R/W) drives on the market have been and still are the Plextor and Yamaha models. Sony's latest offerings (Spressa) might just be on par -- finally.

The Plextor drives are certainly good but also certainly quite pricey. I wouldn't necessarily say you would be throwing away good money buying a Plextor drive, but it could probably be proven that this is the case with the typical home or even semi-pro user.

Sony Spressa CD-R/W drives are being pushed into the mass-market realm along side HP 9xxx, Panasonic, and Mitsui drives. The Sony drive has generally turned out to be a better drive than these.

Yamaha knows CD-R. Period. Yamaha basically invented CD-R technology back in the 1980s. Yamaha has also done a wonderful job reducing the price of CD-R technology over the years and that's why they continue to be the largest producer of CD-R drive mechanisms (Yamaha drives are also resold by several companies under their name, e.g. -- Smart & Friendly). The cost of a Yamaha drive is not much more than a bargain basement Mitsui, Panasonic, or HP CD-R drive, yet Yamaha drives work every bit as well as the pricey Plextor drives.

Hmmmm.... Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what the best choice is.
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Cooperman:
I over-looked something... what about USB Cd burners... how do they compare to IDE or SCSI?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>


Only if you are willing to write 'em at 2x. Problem is right now, USB 1.x only has a maximum bandwidth of 12Mb/s (1.5 MB/s).

Eventually, when USB 2.0 arrives (probably next year), a USB 2.0 CD-R will actually be a decent way to go. USB 2.0 is supposed to support close to 50 MB/s throughput (about a 40x increase).

Key:
----
Mb/s = Mega Bits per Second
MB/s = Mega Bytes per Second


[This message has been edited by Gary Hendershot (edited 03-16-2000).]
 
I Have had excellent results with the PLEXTOR 8/4/32A Rewritable IDE Drive.
Reasonable price too.I have a SCSI system already and I went IDE for the drive.
8X Burn is FAST!
 
Gary: Why should USB be limiting with a published bandwidth of 12Mbps? Is it because no-one is selling a 4x or 8x writer? I haven't researched this because I love my IDE burner which consumes all of 600KB/sec, which is 4.8Mbps. 8x burn is 9.6Mbps.
Why do you need 50Mbps?
RedPepper: Do you really have to use the more expensive 8x certified discs to burn at 8x?
 
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