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Topic: Buying a new CD Writer (Read 19214 times) previous topic - next topic
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Buying a new CD Writer

Reply #50 –
Here in france, I can find two kinds of HP :

74 min made in Japan, no case : Disc Manufacturer=Mitsui.
I got one scratched inside the box.

80 min made in Taiwan, imported from Mexico, jewel cases : Disc Manufacturer=Ricoh.

Buying a new CD Writer

Reply #51 –
Quote
Here in france, I can find two kinds of HP : 

74 min made in Japan, no case : Disc Manufacturer=Mitsui. 
I got one scratched inside the box. 

80 min made in Taiwan, imported from Mexico, jewel cases : Disc Manufacturer=Ricoh.


and what are the max supported speeds ?

Out here, in India I have seen 32X HP media - 80 min, 700 MB.  I haven't checked the dye manufacturer as yet. 

Earlier the 74 min 650 MB Ricoh manufactured (not very sure) versions were available.

Another worry is that you never know when these branded guys move over to a different dye manufacturer.
There are only 10 types of people on this earth - those who know binary and those who don't.

Dell Inspiron 5100
P4 2.4 533 FSB,
512 MB / 40 GB,
Windows XP Home

Buying a new CD Writer

Reply #52 –
I always use this both cdrs along with verbatim.

Speaking about my burner, i bought a plextor 24/10/40Audio. It can copy ANY CD; i've tried several safedisc2 or cdilla and it reads/burns like a sweet baby ass, if you use clone cd the cd works like an original. It can reach up to 44X digital audio extraction on the outer ends of the cd without errors no matter what im doing in the comp. Its burnproof tech lets you to even encode audio while burning  . It even has Powerec II, which automaticaly detects the cd dye material and sets an optimum laser power to burn. As a proof i had burned 16x cds at 24x and its perfectly readable even in old music cd players. I have 2 years of experience on cd burning...

As a final note, LG ones are also good (if not better) for cd cloning with good digital audio extraction, but Lite-On ones are slow ass on audio so they suck.

Whatever you want to buy, get a 24x Plextor - > LG -> Lite-On burner. PRice is your choice. (all are easy to find below $100 in www.pricewatch.com

Buying a new CD Writer

Reply #53 –
Quote
Originally posted by Pio2001
Originally posted by Cygnus X1
Nero will still say " burning at 24x (3600kb/sec)", but the drive will not spin up for zone-clv and stays in 8x mode the whole time

It sounds like your version of Nero doesn't support or recognize your burner. Do you have the last one ?


Hmmm... you might mention this problem to Ahead (Nero),  they might be able to work around it for these drives that read the disk..  should be able to at least say the actual burn rate,  if not also be able to force the writing speed.

Buying a new CD Writer

Reply #54 –
Quote
Originally posted by Phobos
I always use this both cdrs along with verbatim.

Speaking about my burner, i bought a plextor 24/10/40Audio. It can copy ANY CD; i've tried several safedisc2 or cdilla and it reads/burns like a sweet baby ass, if you use clone cd the cd works like an original. It can reach up to 44X digital audio extraction on the outer ends of the cd without errors no matter what im doing in the comp. Its burnproof tech lets you to even encode audio while burning  . It even has Powerec II, which automaticaly detects the cd dye material and sets an optimum laser power to burn. As a proof i had burned 16x cds at 24x and its perfectly readable even in old music cd players. I have 2 years of experience on cd burning...

I have the same CD-RW you do (Plextor 24/10/40A), but am not quite as impressed with it.  I haven't done any audio extraction with it yet (good way to wear out an expensive CD-RW drive, better to use a cheaper drive for that)... but I find the Plextor doesn't write any better or faster (at least on cheap media) than other burners, like an AOpen 24x10x40 I had.

So far, the only real greatness I've found with the Plextor is in reading, it appears to read fast (and without errors) data discs that give other drives all kinds of trouble.  As for burning, it doesn't seem any better than any other decent quality burner.

Buying a new CD Writer

Reply #55 –
Quote
Originally posted by fewtch

I have the same CD-RW you do (Plextor 24/10/40A), but am not quite as impressed with it.  I haven't done any audio extraction with it yet (good way to wear out an expensive CD-RW drive, better to use a cheaper drive for that)... but I find the Plextor doesn't write any better or faster (at least on cheap media) than other burners, like an AOpen 24x10x40 I had.

So far, the only real greatness I've found with the Plextor is in reading, it appears to read fast (and without errors) data discs that give other drives all kinds of trouble.  As for burning, it doesn't seem any better than any other decent quality burner.


As many people said before, this isnt just about speed, but quality, as it is for audio. Why would i want to burn an audio cd at 40X if it cant even be played??? or just to burn it at samw 24x but blame an excelent product just because its a little slow. This drive is an excellent reader, a good writer with descent quality. After looking at LGs and Lite-Ons ¡, im proud of mi decision, besides you can get it for $100 with shipping included. Just look at www.cdmediaworld.com and the best one is a plextor

Buying a new CD Writer

Reply #56 –
I got mine for $140 local (retail boxed), so it got here in one day via UPS ground.  With the Plextor $20 rebate the total is $120, not too bad for a retail Plextor. 

But I'm not that thrilled with the way it handles cheaper media like CMC magnetics.  Given, this media is well known to be poor quality, but the BLER rates are high (tested with Nero CD Speed and CD-R Inspector) even writing at slower speeds like 10x -- I would expect better than that from Plextor.  It doesn't write with any less errors than my other 24x drive (AOpen CRW2440).

That's all I was saying... from everything I read (reviews, etc) Plextor was king up to 16x, but the 24x drive is considered 'lukewarm' -- wish I had known before putting down that $140, instead of afterward.  Oh well.  Next time I'll save $40 or $50 and get a LiteOn instead.

P.S... I'm still surprised that my old Aopen 6x4x24 drive writes perfectly on all media (no reported block errors at all), even with the cheapest media.  Something must have been very different with the older CD writers (other than speed).

Buying a new CD Writer

Reply #57 –
Quote
Originally posted by experttech
and what are the max supported speeds ? [of those HP CDRs]


They were 16x, I think. Maybe 12x for the Mitsuis ones. I gave up, since the manufacturer seemed to change fatser than his shadow.

Buying a new CD Writer

Reply #58 –
FYI, if you are in the US, you can find Taiyo Yuden discs at K-Mart, of all places, for 18.99 (50 700MB discs).  They are sold as the Fujifilm brand, and are packaged in spindles of 50 in a cake box with aqua-blue wrapping. The reason why I'm being so specific as to the packaging is due to the fact that some of Fujifilm's CD-R's are made by Ritek, a brand which we definitely should avoid. I'm not sure exactly how to tell which discs are made by whom, but would assume that an identical package would contain identical discs(?) I confirmed that the discs I bought were indeed manufactured by Taiyo Yuden through the use of Feurio. The discs burn flawlessly at 24x on my LG burner, so I have "donated" my error-prone CMC Magnetics discs to a friend with a lowly 8x burner

Buying a new CD Writer

Reply #59 –
Quote
Originally posted by Cygnus X1
The discs burn flawlessly at 24x on my LG burner


Great to hear that 

I have more or less decided to go in for a LG Writer.

One thing that is worrying me is this:
http://www.cdrlabs.com/reviews/index.php?r...5&page=Features

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The biggest feature missing from this drive is support for UDMA 33. Like the GCE-8160B before it, the GCE-8240B supports PIO Mode 4 and MultiWord DMA - Mode 2 (burst DMA). In either case, the speed is limited to only 16.6MB/s. This really does not matter if the drive is on an IDE chain by itself or with another PIO Mode 4 device because the drive will perform fine. However, if it's on the same IDE chain as a UDMA 33 DVD-ROM, it can prevent the DVD drive from reaching its maximum speed because the IDE chain will run at the lesser of the two speeds.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


This means that you cannot make it the slave of an existing IDE disk :mad:

This may be a BIG problem as I already have two hard drives and one CDROM drive.
There are only 10 types of people on this earth - those who know binary and those who don't.

Dell Inspiron 5100
P4 2.4 533 FSB,
512 MB / 40 GB,
Windows XP Home

Buying a new CD Writer

Reply #60 –
expertech,

In any case, it is not recommended to set up an optical device on the same IDE channel as a hard drive: this would force the hard drive to run at the slower speed of the optical device.

With your setup, you should put both hard drives on the same IDE channel, and both optical devices on the other channel.

Make sure you set up all devices as slave/master and not cable select. The master has to be at the end of the cable, otherwise the slave would be fighting for channel control.

Set the CD-Writer as master, and the CD-Rom drive as slave. You probably won't be able to do straight copies from CD to CD-R.

Buying a new CD Writer

Reply #61 –
Quote
Originally posted by quellcore
Nobody mentioned LG writers so far, what's wrong with them?
I really want to buy a new writer, that can also read DVD. Because i already have 2 Plextor drives in my system (SCSI PX-412C and PX-32ts) already, i need a combo drive!


I'm interested in the LG GCC-4120B (12x8x32 CD-RW Drive with 8x DVD-ROM Reading Capability) for just around 100€ and finally found & bought one at ebay for 75€ all together.
So, i'm still waiting for it, but hopefully it won't be that bad! I really would have prefered a SCSI solution (Have to enable my IDE controllers now just for the writer, who could have imagined this 2 years ago ), but the manufactors of CD writers seem to blackball the SCSI system generally, one of the latest one is still the Plextor 12x i think!

So far! CU
Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security, will not have, nor do they deserve, either one! (Benjamin Franklin)

Buying a new CD Writer

Reply #62 –
Quote
Originally posted by quellcore


Since nobody of you tried to convince me not to buy (or steal ) it i was searching for LG GCC-4120B (12x8x32 + 8x DVD-ROM) and finally found & bought one at ebay for 75€ all together.

Glad to see i'm not the only one messing around on Ebay here... it's kinda become a hobby... I buy stuff I don't need, and sell stuff I don't need, so it's in a constant cycle.

Buying a new CD Writer

Reply #63 –
Quote
Originally posted by arman68

With your setup, you should put both hard drives on the same IDE channel, and both optical devices on the other channel.


Thanks for your input. But this problem will still persist if for example I get a DVD ROM drive in future. The DVD ROM will be forced to run at the slower PIO mode 4 of the CD Writer.

What I'm surprised about is that even these 'modern' CD Writers are still supporting the older PIO Mode 4 :mad:
There are only 10 types of people on this earth - those who know binary and those who don't.

Dell Inspiron 5100
P4 2.4 533 FSB,
512 MB / 40 GB,
Windows XP Home

Buying a new CD Writer

Reply #64 –
Quote
Originally posted by fewtch
I buy stuff I don't need, and sell stuff I don't need


Hehe that is a funny typo
There are only 10 types of people on this earth - those who know binary and those who don't.

Dell Inspiron 5100
P4 2.4 533 FSB,
512 MB / 40 GB,
Windows XP Home

Buying a new CD Writer

Reply #65 –
Quote
Originally posted by experttech


Hehe that is a funny typo


I don't think it was a typo  I have the same problem, eBay is great for buying stuff you don't need

Buying a new CD Writer

Reply #66 –
I've bought 50 discs of 'Silver Circle' (from 'Schaulandt/Germany'), CDR identifier gave me the following info:
Code: [Select]
ATIP:              97m 17s 06f

Disc Manufacturer: Moser Baer India Ltd. ???

Reflective layer:  Dye (Short strategy; e.g. Phthalocyanine)

Media type:        CD-Recordable

Recording Speeds:  min. unknown - max. unknown

nominal Capacity:  702.83MB (79m 59s 74f / LBA: 359849)

But can't find that Disc Manufacturer Moser Baer India Ltd. in the list at cdmediaworld

...anybody out there who got some experiences with that discs or with that manufacturer?
Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security, will not have, nor do they deserve, either one! (Benjamin Franklin)

Buying a new CD Writer

Reply #67 –
Quote
Originally posted by quellcore
I've bought 50 discs of 'Silver Circle' 

...anybody out there who got some experiences with that discs or with that manufacturer?


Here: http://www.pcwelt.de/tests/hardware-tests/rohlinge/23192/

Average BLER: 9.4 errors/sec
Maximum BLER: 73.83 errors/sec (pretty high)
E22 errors: yes
E32 errors: no

Although it's a 24x CD-R, burning with 16x is recommended.

Buying a new CD Writer

Reply #68 –
Quote
Originally posted by CiTay
Here: http://www.pcwelt.de/tests/hardware-tests/rohlinge/23192/

Although it's a 24x CD-R, burning with 16x is recommended.

So, i really should be happy that my slow writer just writes 4x and the new one (mentioned above) just can write 12x

But to be serious: I really think the difference between 4x and 12x is quite noticable, but differences between 24x and 32x are getting unimportant.  (2 or 3 minutes, who cares?)
In consideration of the fact that there are no real good disc media out up to now for the fastest writers it sounds more than a disadvantage. You would just get pi##ed because you can't write CD's with the maximum possible speed of your writer! :mad:
Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security, will not have, nor do they deserve, either one! (Benjamin Franklin)

Buying a new CD Writer

Reply #69 –
Pio4 allows transfer rates up to 110x, from a CD ROM's point of view, so it doesn't limit CD ROM drives in any way to my knowledge (http://www.cdrlabs.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=3032 )

I've recently messed up with my IDE settings, and the idea of the lowest device on the plug limiting the bandwidth being an old myth from the plain IDE times (opposed to E-IDE) seems confirmed, though at the limit of what I could measure :
With the HD as master and the Pio4 Sony DDU1621 as slave, I drag'n dropped a 140 MB file several times from a partition to another of the HD until it was cached in the RAM, that is 512 MB.
The write time dropped to 3 seconds, while 8.5 seconds are needed in PIO4 mode. Therefore the HD was not limited by the PIO4 of its slave.

One thing could have affected the experiment : I don't know if Window 98 is clever enough to undelete the target data seeing that I asked a copy of the same file as before.
Therefore I tried on another partition, where the data had never been written, it took 5 seconds. I consider this last verification not to be conclusive, since the Windows Explorer progress bar displays very fast, and might not be a good tool to measure the real time spend. The actual transfer could have lasted 8.5 s.

EDIT : with the two drives on the same plug, it's a fact that the HD is slowed down when the CD ROM drive works. The above test was done with the CR ROM drive idle.

Buying a new CD Writer

Reply #70 –
A couple of questions more before I finalize:

1. The LG Writer supports limited writing speeds (32x, 24x (Z-CLV), 16x, 12x, 8x (CLV)), as opposed to other writers (wg: Samsung). Will this cause any problems ?

2. Can it overburn, create 99 min CDs ?
There are only 10 types of people on this earth - those who know binary and those who don't.

Dell Inspiron 5100
P4 2.4 533 FSB,
512 MB / 40 GB,
Windows XP Home

Buying a new CD Writer

Reply #71 –
LG drives support 99 minute CD-R's to 99:59 (though I have to admit I have problems going past 99:00, but it's likely the discs, not the drive). Also, the lack of speed choices is nothing to worry about. . . I didn't buy a 24x drive to be able to burn at 20x or 4x, you know what I mean?

Somebody mentioned the fact that the drive only supports PIO4, which I can verify. However, I have my LG slaved to a DVD-ROM and haven't experienced problems although my DVD is UDMA 33. 16,000KB/s is faster than I would ever need, anyway.

Buying a new CD Writer

Reply #72 –
And are there any problems that the users here experienced when burning 99 min CDs ? Ive heard that its data is unreadable at the edges, etc etc. Is it ok to buy and burn 99 min media ??? How about the CDR quality using Nero CDSpeed etc for 99 min CDs?

Especially since the lowest supported speed for the LG 32X writer is 8X which is supposed to be too high for overburning. See http://www4.tomshardware.com/storage/02q2/...00audio-10.html
There are only 10 types of people on this earth - those who know binary and those who don't.

Dell Inspiron 5100
P4 2.4 533 FSB,
512 MB / 40 GB,
Windows XP Home

Buying a new CD Writer

Reply #73 –
In Decemeber last year I was selecting best CDRW drive as I sold my ancient Yamaha 4416. After reading tons of reviews all over the place and forums (usenet) I came to the conclusion that TEAC is the only drive that does all jobs well at the same time has low price. So I bought TEAC 524E, you can't imagine how happy I am with this drive.
1. It is very quiet
2. It is very fast when it reads CD/CDR and a bit slower (32x) when it reads CDRW
3. I haven't produces a single coaster even when recorded a few CDs at maximum speed (I'm using TDK 24x (Ritek) and Gigastorage 16x CDRs and Memorex & Verbatim CDRWs).
4. When compared to Lite-on it has 4x speed, that is much better for recording Audio CDs (that's the same reason Yahama still has 1x speed).
5. As it was informally promised on June 6th, 2002 TEAC released new firmware and now the drive supports Mt. Rainer (I wonder what else will they add in future).
6. Did I mention that this drive reads everything I throw at it? Scratched CD? - No problem, CD with a crack - no problem.

Now my friend got TEAC 540E for about 110$ US here in Toronto, so we tested it and it is as good as mine but with more cache (8Mb) and faster speeds.

From what I know from TEAC user these drives keep performing great over a long period of time (I have different information about Ricoh, Acer, etc that start produce coasters after a couple of years).

BTW, all Audio CDs that I recorded with this drive a played very well on my SONY DVD-7700 that didn't want to play any of the audio cd from my Yamaha 4416.

TEAC is an Investment.
My endian is bigger than yours.