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Affordable SCSI DVD Writers?

Posted by timothy on from the rare-bird-in-the-hand dept.

ByTor-2112 writes: "DVD recorders seem to be ready to break loose on the consumer market, despite the remaining uncertainty about DVD-RW, DVD+RW, DVD-RAM etc. I see ATAPI DVD writers, but I do not warm to IDE/ATA-based technology. When I've got a $10 blank DVD on the line, in SCSI we trust. I have been unable to locate a SCSI DVD writer that falls within the general price range (plus the usual SCSI markup) of the ATAPI burners. Firewire seems nice, but FreeBSD does not support this yet. Anyone seen a drive out there that might fit the bill?" Anyone who can lend hope on the Firewire front is encouraged to speak up here as well.

16 comments

  1. Pricewatch by Karma+50 · · Score: 3, Informative

    You've looked on Pricewatch right?
    The price ranges for SCSI and ATAPI seem to overlap.

    --
    http://www.thehungersite.com
    1. Re:Pricewatch by nadie · · Score: 1

      On a side topic, anyone out there know any pricewatch type sites in other countries?

  2. Why DVD and why BSD? by angelo · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm assuming you want to burn Data cds. It seems that you would be better off with some other form of file storage mechanism than DVD. I don't think you will find much in the way of video editing / authoring on your platform of choice.

    --
    Lowmag.net
  3. DVD=IDE? by larien · · Score: 2

    It certainly seems that for DVD drives, you're rather stuck with IDE; there are very few SCSI DVD reader reader drives, far less writers. This has left me with an IDE DVD drive while I have a SCSI CD-RW.

    1. Re:DVD=IDE? by scubacuda · · Score: 1

      In fact, when you do a search on CNET's hardware search for SCSI DVD readers, you find only *three*.

    2. Re:DVD=IDE? by CMiYC · · Score: 3, Informative

      I went with a Toshiba Slot loading DVD player. I never had a problem finding it. Since there are fewer drives on the market, it is reasonable to assume that they might be of higher quaility. If someone is willing to pay extra for a SCSi then they would expct higher quaility

      In any event, I think that this is a moot point. Either they already have a SCSI reader or they will simply use their writer as one. Nor do I think they care if the reader is scsi or not.

    3. Re:DVD=IDE? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There are quite a few SCSI DVD readers out there, I for one got two of them, different brands and they work as a charm.

  4. Why not IDE DVD-R's? by Judg3 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    At work I use a Pioneer DVR-A03 IDE DVD-R. Currently the fast spec DVD-R can write is 2x. That's roughly 16x CD-ROM speed-wise (2.76mb/s write). I have no problems with it, and I write a lot of files to each DVD. In the range of 40-60,000 small files. Occasionally I've burned large multi-gig files to it to, without a problem. I've had it 4 months and only had 1 disk not burn properly. I also use my pc while its burning, and that hasnt caused a buffer under-run for me yet

    Before that I had a SCSI 1x DVD-R, and it was hell to configure it, what with ASPI and what not. It would easily take me a week to set it up right, but with the A03 it was literally plug it in, install the software, start burning.

    Don't dismiss IDE, it has it's advantages and with such a low data transfer, it doesnt make much sense to go SCSI for this.

    --
    Looking for hardware (Currently need: Large Etch-a-Sketch) Have one? See my journal!
    1. Re:Why not IDE DVD-R's? by CMiYC · · Score: 2

      I don't think its only about speed. SCSI is far more toleratent of other things going on with the bus. The IDE bus was never really meant to be used in a multitasking system. If a data packet had to be delayed for an unknown amount of time, that is acceptable. SCSI, on the other hand, doesn't have this issue.

  5. DVD-RAM by Tiersten · · Score: 1

    You can get a DVD-RAM drive for about £170 now but DVD-RAM discs aren't supported in much else apart from another DVD-RAM drive...

    If you want to make discs for a DVD player or a normal DVD-ROM drive then your best bet would be to wait for the DVD-RW drives to drop in price. They're about £300-£400 still however.

    1. Re:DVD-RAM by Tet · · Score: 2
      DVD-RAM discs aren't supported in much else apart from another DVD-RAM drive...

      DVD-RAM media comes in two options, Type I and Type II. Apparently, Type II media is removable from its caddy, and can be used as a normal DVD. I've yet to verify this, though, as I only have Type I media. BTW, my Panasonic LF-D101 DVD-RAM is SCSI, and has worked fine for me so far. I, too, would recommend SCSI for this sort of thing. But thinking about it, I'm the sort of person that would recommend SCSI for pretty much everything anyway :-)

      --
      "The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
  6. �Firewire = IDE? by nadie · · Score: 1

    I have been under the impression that firewire drives (hard drives, cdrws, what ever) are simply ide drives with an adaptor.

    Do the drive manufactures actually make Drives with a native firewire interface?

  7. IDE bigotry == Clueless. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    You see people betray themselves over this issue all the time, and it just goes to show how clueless they are.

    Show me one single part of the SCSI spec that the ATA spec dosent have, that pertains to removable rewritable devices, and could possibly make burning anything more reliable. Yes, people bitch about IDE, but more often than not, its because they have not set up their channels ideally.

    SCSI can have exactly the same problems! However I have seen plenty of well-setup SCSI systems, with seperate controllers for disk and for removables, and things work great. Then people complain when they expect ATA to do miracles, because they are too stupid to keep their source and their writer on seperate channels, use crappy cables, use ancient readers or disks, etc. SCSI dosent work too well with your old ST11200N on it, either you know.

    Personally, I think a mix of ATA and SCSI is great. I'll keep my high-performance scsi controllers handling the disks. (Except for SCSI tape) ATA controllers are nice because they usually dont take up any slots, are perfectly fine for removables or slow mass-storage, and it keeps the SCSI chain free.

    1. Re:IDE bigotry == Clueless. by james_shoemaker · · Score: 1

      Actually SCSI works just fine with my old ST11200N on it, SCSI negotiates transfer rates with each device individually. My hard drives and burner share a scsi bus just fine. The only reason to use IDE is price.

  8. Yes, IDE is a coaster factory by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I don't think I've ever made a coaster due to the hardware, just software configuration problems or ejecting a CD in windows (!) in the OTHER CD drive during burning which caused the OS to choke, burning hundreds of CDRs. Not a DVDR, but similar idea.

    You might not want to add an IDE controller if you don't have one, but I don't see any evidence that it makes for a less dependable optical storage transfer medium. But hey, this is slashdot, baseless inflammatory comments are welcome here. ;-P

  9. IDE 2 SCSI Converters are your friend by rmassa · · Score: 1

    When I purchase my new linux box, I'm planning on using scsi to ide converters for all my ide peripherals that I either can't get or am not satisfied with the solutions available in scsi. The main benfit to scsi is that it doesn't have the cpu overhead that IDE still has, even with its newest standards. Friends and co-workers of mine have used scsi-ide converters and haven't reported any problems with them, and in fact are very pleased. I believe that the main difference between the 2K+ SCSI and the 1K IDE DVD burners is that the IDE ones cannot copy DVDs, where as the older SCSI version can. Anyways, scsi to ide converters are a pretty good steal at about $100 a pop (especially for peripherals like the DVD burner where you'd save a lot of money) and you can get them from: http://www.iodata.com http://www.ide2scsi.com