Affordable SCSI DVD Writers?

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.

Comments

Pricewatch

[Karma 50]

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

Why DVD and why BSD?

[angelo]

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.

DVD=IDE?

[larien]

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.

Re:DVD=IDE?

[CMiYC]

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.

Why not IDE DVD-R's?

[Judg3]

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.

Re:Why not IDE DVD-R's?

[CMiYC]

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.

Re:DVD-RAM

[Tet]

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 :-)