Forty-Speed CD-RW Shootout

Keefe John writes: "Several months ago, 40x burning became a reality when Plextor got the jump on all of the other optical storage companies with the PX-W4012TA CD-RW. Since then, many companies have been coming out with versions of their own. As with any genre of products, a few stood out above the rest. Namely, the original tried and true Plexwriter; the wallet-friendly Lite-On, and the speed-daemon Teac. Today Techware Labs will be comparing the three drives on their relative merits. Read the full review over at Techware Labs."

Comments

Why 40x?

[Winterblink]

Aren't there already manufacturers selling 52x drives?

Re:Why 40x?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just got my 48x drive in the mail....Cendyne kicks ass.

Re:Why 40x?

[Jucius Maximus]

"Aren't there already manufacturers selling 52x drives?"

Because at that point, you'd be contending with the speed of the IDE bus to avoid buffer underruns.

Until peoples' machines have enough RAM to cache whatever you want to burn, I doubt 52x burning will be reliable.

Re:Why 40x?

[velocipenguin]

SCSI, anyone? :D

Not all drives have to run at ATA-33 speeds...

Re:Why 40x?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. I just realized that I could cache a whole CD on my machine... Almost 2, actually.

Re:Why 40x?

[dr.Flake]

I remember a story of someone spinning a CD-ROM so fast it would explode. As a recall it wasn't that far away from 52x speed !

When will they start burning with multiple lasers simultaniously? Filling up a RW in 10 sec would really kill the floppy/ZIP media.

Seriously, the only reason you wan't this enourmous speed is for a casual back-up/copy of something too big to fit on a floppy.

A true back-up can last 200 second without being irritatingly slow.

You're collegue breathing over your shoulder waiting for that animation to be burned to disk is irritating after 10 seconds.

Re:Why 40x?

[zaffir]

About 4 or 5 years ago, Kenwood was king (or at least tried to be) of the CD-ROM market with their 7 (or was it 5?) laser CD-ROM. I think they had a 52x and a 72x model. Both ran silently. Too bad they had so many problems.

Re:Why 40x?

[FuzzyDaddy]

You're collegue breathing over your shoulder waiting for that animation to be burned to disk is irritating after 10 seconds

Actually, it's irritating after far less than 10 seconds.

Re:Why 40x?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you find it necessary to openly brag about the muscle of your PC?

Goes along with the same philosphy of men buying expensive sports cars I suppose...

Re:Why 40x?

[ncc74656]

Aren't there already manufacturers selling 52x drives?

I think I've heard something along those lines. I know they're selling 48x drives at least, as I have a 48x12x48 Lite-On at home now. (The spindle of media I'm currently using max out at 40x, though another spindle in my stash of blanks will burn at 48x.)

Re:Why 40x?

[Reece400]

"I remember a story of someone spinning a CD-ROM so fast it would explode. As a recall it wasn't that far away from 52x speed !"

That just happened to me last week in my AOpen 52x drive :'( i put it in and it spun up a little off balance, and the CD explodeded into shards in the drive, now i have to replace my friend's cd, and geta new drive as the cd ruined the lens in this one. until now,, i didn't thik it was possible :(

Reece,

Re:Why 40x?

[nanoakron]

that's 52x READ....we're talking about 40x WRITING...

-Nano.

plextor 40x12x40 is great and quiet

[Jucius Maximus]

"Several months ago, 40x burning became a reality when Plextor got the jump on all of the other optical storage companies with the PX-W4012TA CD-RW."

I got this plextor drive shortly after it came out and amazingly, it is QUIETER than the 24x10x40! If you are looking for pretty quiet CD-Rw, I say you should check the plextor 40x12x40 out. Furthermore, the slower one has a fan on the back and mine does not! (Try to get the European version, btw, because it comes with Nero as opposed to Roxio EasyCD.0

Re:plextor 40x12x40 is great and quiet

[Neon Spiral Injector]

I will second that the drive is very quiet. But seems to resonate my Lian-Li 60 at some parts of a burn. Rather annonying.

I'd rather have a white box version. I don't need Windows software, or anything else the came with it.

Re:plextor 40x12x40 is great and quiet

[Reziac]

I have a Plextor 24x CDRW, and it's also *very* quiet, and runs MUCH cooler than my 3 dead/dying Yamahas (4x-6x-8x Yamaha CDRWs have a design flaw that causes early death due to overheating -- the laser warps out of alignment). The only CD drive I've seen that's quieter is my 50x Acer CDROM right under my Plextor. I haven't worked the Plextor all that hard yet, but so far I'm very pleased with it. (We'll see how pleased I really am when we learn what its longevity is! :)

The only annoying thing being the Plextor insisted on being the master (it and the Acer are both IDE), which means it's R: and the CDROM is S: Whereas I believe that all well-brought-up CDROMs are R:, and all CDRWs should be S: :)

BTW I use TDK media for serious archiving, since it's had the most consistent quality.

Note to other submitters

[Quixote]

If you submit a /. story to a site that you run, please check your bandwidth first to see if it can survive the Slashdot effect, or at least put up a less-graphic version of the page.

Re:Note to other submitters

[basscomm]

It's not like people click on the links in a story anyway. They just run over to post something after reading the summary.

Re:Note to other submitters

[AyeRoxor!]

Mirror to the slashdot effect link:

http://web.archive.org/web/20011006050218/http://s sadler.phy.bnl.gov/adler/SDE/SlashDotEffect.html

Re:Note to other submitters

[SpaceJunkie]

Thats kind of a response of apathy given that by the time they read the article, the site will already be slashdotted. So the read the posts to try and glean other useful information - which inevitably draws them to participate in another holy war/slanging match and start posting...

On that note- I still have not visited the site yet....

Yeah, this is SO worthwhile

[Mirk]

Hey! Now you can buy a 40x writer instead of the boring, pedestrian, so-fifteen-minutes-ago 32x writers that we've had to make do with up till now.

Great. That means you can now burn a 74-minute long CD in 111 seconds instead of 139. Just think what you could do with those extra 28 seconds!

Or, no -- wait! Surely it couldn't be that this is just another manifestation of My CPU's Got More Megahertz Than Yours syndrome?

Could it?

Re:Yeah, this is SO worthwhile

[velocipenguin]

Exactly...

"LOL d00d I g0tz t3h 41X burn4r so I AM BETTER lolz!!"

It doesn't really make a difference.

Re:Yeah, this is SO worthwhile

[killmenow]

Think of a small run CD-R house that uses CD-R towers for burning. Let's say they have two or three of these and they do CD-R burning for their customers (think small area bands who can't afford going to large CD replication houses and ordering 5000+ stamped CDs).

If they're trying to burn 1,000 CD-Rs and they can save 28,000 seconds (nearly eight hours), it translates into doing more of these 1,000 CD-R jobs (or even 500 CD-R jobs) per month, per year, etc.

Which translates into making more money.

Make sense now?

Re:Yeah, this is SO worthwhile

[velocipenguin]

For most uses OTHER than mass replication, this is a fairly insignificant speed increase. A 30-second difference in burn time is not going to make Joe Six-Pack's mix CD any better, nor will it save him a significant amount of time. Yes, it will be a timesaver for production use, but it's not very important for most other people.

Re:Yeah, this is SO worthwhile

[Anonymous Coward]

So, uh... why does the home user need it again exactly?

Re:Yeah, this is SO worthwhile

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it makes sense that Grandma needs one too. What an apologist idiot you are! Why not use a Space Shuttle to drive to work!

Re:Yeah, this is SO worthwhile

[Hobophile]

Or, no -- wait! Surely it couldn't be that this is just another manifestation of My CPU's Got More Megahertz Than Yours syndrome?

Gee, or maybe it could be that the people interested in getting one of the new 40x burners don't actually have a 32x burner already, or even one at all! Could it be that such people might appreciate a review that evaluates the current top performers and recommends the best value for their money?

Oh, I forgot. Your post is just a manifestation of the "My Computer's Now Outdated and Since I Can't Brag Any More All I Can Do is Whine About How Mine Still Works Just Great" syndrome.

Re:Yeah, this is SO worthwhile

[nip]

Not to nitpick but dude if you're going to get 1000 cds burned instead of stamped your getting hosed.

costs for 1000 cds burned will 640 bucks bullk, ~1200 w/ packaging(full retail). does it, and no i don't work for them just used them

Re:Yeah, this is SO worthwhile

[ebooher]

Well, yeah, actually. This is *so* worthwhile. You may have had to make do with a *swoons and places his forearm across his forehead* 32x CD-RW, but I've been using my tried and true Sony 8x2x24x CD-RW for ever and a day now.

Just because you bought a drive a month ago and this doesn't pertain to you, doesn't mean that those of us in cyberland that have had CD-R since day one might not go "Hmmm, might finally be time to upgrade."

Just remember, the world does not revolve around *you*

It revolves around *me* ..... DUH!

[Disclaimer - (As Always) Any and all views, opinions, out looks, philosophies, words of wisdom, words of brash stupidity, and principles out lined in this post are the belief of the Reverend Eddie W. Booher, Jr. and are not necessarily synonymous with the views of his employer or religion.]

Re:Yeah, this is SO worthwhile

[velocipenguin]

It's only useful to drive a space shuttle to work if you're using 1000 of them. Then you'll save even more time getting to work!

Re:Yeah, this is SO worthwhile

[mccalli]

Hey! Now you can buy a 40x writer instead of the boring, pedestrian, so-fifteen-minutes-ago 32x writers that we've had to make do with up till now.

Cool!

Is it faster than the 2x I've currently got in my desktop, or the 4x in my laptop? It is? Well then, maybe this review is useful to me after all...

Cheers,
Ian

Re:Yeah, this is SO worthwhile

[masterkool]

Hey, I'm in a bunch of cheap @ home garage bands. This is how garagebands make CD's. You go to a recording studio for a day ($500 at least) and make a single CD with multiple tracks. You take this "master" CD home and buy 1000 CDR's. You then submit yourselves to the insanely monotonous task of sitting at a computer for 5 hours a day...CD in...*whrrrr*...CD out...repeat. I personally would like to save an extra 8 hours of doing this. SO in the long run, it can help home buisnesses. The only way it might not be as useful is, as stated, for a person to make a few CD's for personal use.

Re:Yeah, this is SO worthwhile

[Schnapple]

Actually I just picked up the 40x Lite-On last week and I can say without a doubt it beats the hell out of the Creative 4X burner I've had in my system for three years (the last six of which it has been broken)

Re:Yeah, this is SO worthwhile

[etyam]

If they're trying to burn 1,000 CD-Rs and they can save 28,000 seconds (nearly eight hours), it translates into doing more of these 1,000 CD-R jobs (or even 500 CD-R jobs) per month, per year, etc.

Which translates into making more money</i>

Exactly. I work at a stockphoto agency where we burn really large amounts of CD's. Believe me: every increase in speed translates directly into money for us.

Patrick

Re:Yeah, this is SO worthwhile

[saider]

Only if your monkeys can change the CDs faster than 28 seconds. That may seem trivial, but motivating a minimum wage someone to keep an eye on CD's without dozing off/browsing slashdot is not easy. It really is better to get an automated system, but they won't use these drives. They may use the same technology, but the drives featured are for end users, not production shops.

Actually it is just a progression of technology. Things will always get faster/better/cheaper over time. There is no need to justify these small differences because the benefit will go largely unnoticed. The only place it matters is in advertising.

Re:Yeah, this is SO worthwhile

[killmenow]

You make about as much sense as a schizophrenic. Forget your meds today?

Re:Yeah, this is SO worthwhile

[killmenow]

Totally agreed. I'm happy with 20x. I tend not to burn things (personally) faster than 16x just because I tend to make more coasters, but then I personally buy whatever the cheapest CD-R media is at the time.

Re:Yeah, this is SO worthwhile

[KernelHappy]

But is this really a "slashdot" article. I mean is it really big news to the general public that you can shave 28 seconds off a burn? Anyone that has a true need (like the garage bands or businesses) or desire for these drives would search for the review and this server wouldn't be suffering.

Now a review of 8x DVD writers, that's something I think many would like to see.

Re:Yeah, this is SO worthwhile

[killmenow]

Well, that could be. I just pulled that number out of my arse. Maybe we're talking bands only getting 100 CDs. I'd have to check with our production folks to find out what the average runs are we do.

Re:Yeah, this is SO worthwhile

[glwtta]

hmm, yes you are right they should not put out faster products if somewhat slower ones exist already. I don't think they expect 32x owners to want those, people like me on the other hand (who own a 10x that is on it's last legs) just might want to get it.

Re:Yeah, this is SO worthwhile

[Anonymous Coward]

what kind of drugs are you on?

if you are going to burn 1000 cd's you had damn well better have a duplicator. 4 drives or more, 1 read drive.. you plop it in and press start, it grabs blanks from the spindle, and drops the created on the stacker.

It costs about $6,000.00 for one with 2 drivers to start and is well within the price range of any business no matter how small.

If you are in business you use business TOOLS not toy crap slapped together by some pimple faced kid.

Re:Yeah, this is SO worthwhile

[horati0]

costs for 1000 cds burned will 640 bucks bullk, ~1200 w/ packaging(full retail). does it, and no i don't work for them just used them

I used those guys for a dupe job once, the dude Jules that is the customer rep is one crazy mofo. He made me redo the cover design because it was 1/16" larger than spec. He is scary sounding and I think he drinks. But they do good work.

I'm just bitter because I don't have my own CD pressing plant.

Re:Yeah, this is SO worthwhile

[forged]

What your comment made me think of, are all those CD-ROM outlets in singapore where you choose whatever is on display on a table outside, such as really cool software compilations. A tthe counter, the guy will either bring the media from behind the counter, or insert a couple of blanks into a tower and ask you to wait 3 minutes while they are made for you.

I guess the waiting will now be in the area of 2 minutes, and best of all, the price won't probably change either !

(before anyone asks: no I'm not buying anything from there and I don't live in singapore either, but yes I could see with my eyes what I describe when I went there; it's right in the open, and no-one there seems to care).

Re:Yeah, this is SO worthwhile

[killmenow]

Again, I was speaking *hypothetically*. So 1000 is a stupid number to burn this way, fine. We have duplicators (1 read, 7 burn) that take standard off-the-shelf drives. Maybe SCSI only, I don't know...so this may be moot unless they come out with a SCSI version. Maybe some guy comes in and only wants 100 burned. The faster we can turn out those 100 CD-R jobs, the more of them we can do.

I just responded to someone who said it was pointless with a *possible* reason why it *might* make sense.

Christ, people on /. can be assholes...especially the anonymous ones.

Re:Yeah, this is SO worthwhile

[TheWickedKingJeremy]

But is this really a "slashdot" article. I mean is it really big news to the general public that you can shave 28 seconds off a burn?

I didn't get the memo that states "slashdot articles" must always cover ground-breaking events...

Do you have any idea how many slashdot articles cover Star Wars, Star Trek, D&D, or myriad other extremely-unimportant-on-the-grand-scale-of-things topics? I agree that this particular article is not *terribly* interesting, but hey, some people out there might find discussion about it useful... if you dont, why are you reading this? ;)

Re:Yeah, this is SO worthwhile

[velocipenguin]

I forgot to sleep today. Shut up. :P I was attempting to mock the previous post about the benefits when using many, many drives, but I guess the (feeble) humor was lost on you.

Re:Yeah, this is SO worthwhile

[Amazing Quantum Man]

The Lite-On got unanmimous 5-stars from anyone who bothered to write a review on NewEgg.

Re:Yeah, this is SO worthwhile

[shepd]

>If you are in business you use business TOOLS not toy crap slapped together by some pimple faced kid.

A businesses best tools are its employees. Any business forgetting about that will find itself part of the next economy bomb, I can assure you.

Re:Yeah, this is SO worthwhile

[Quixadhal]

Only if you're a software pirate. :)

If you're duplicating a legitimate source of data, you'd be a fool not to just create a single master image and get it stamped.

Seriously, when you're a small-time band, you burn a few hundred a month... big deal. If you're trying to do a few thousand, you're costing yourself more money in wasted time than you're saving by not having a duplication place do this for you.

OTOH, if your time is worth nothing to you (monetarily OR socially), then by all means, sit and stare at the blinkin' lights all day and flip discs. Imagine they're hamburger patties, but that you're getting paid a negative minimum-wage for doing it. :)

Re:Yeah, this is SO worthwhile

[glesga_kiss]

It happens everywhere. You've just not seen it. How often do you go to the local markets back home? At my local one there are registered stalls at a large weekly market selling dodgy DVDs, music and software. Everything and anything. They are at the same spot every week and all traders must be registered with the organisers. Either the Police don't care or they are getting paid-off.

Occassionally you hear about them getting raided, but I've also heard they usually know when one is comming. I guess the police are more concerned with cutting down on drink related violence and theft.

The people smell funny and live up to their theiving tendances not just in the software sense...to be avoided at all costs!!

Re:Yeah, this is SO worthwhile

[moheeb]

But is this really a "slashdot" article. I mean is it really big news to the general public that you can shave 28 seconds off a burn? Anyone that has a true need (like the garage bands or businesses) or desire for these drives would search for the review and this server wouldn't be suffering.

Obviously a fair number of people that read Slashdot must care otherwise the "server wouldn't be suffering" would it?
Seeing as I recently upgraded from my 2x burner.....I figure I should get all the x's I can.

Re:Yeah, this is SO worthwhile

[Kashif Shaikh]

Great. That means you can now burn a 74-minute long CD in 111 seconds instead of 139. Just think what you could do with those extra 28 seconds!

Huh? My 16x burner can burn 700MB in roughly 4 minutes. So to think a 40X takes 2 minutes to burn...when it *should* be lower sucks.

Re:Yeah, this is SO worthwhile

[PainKilleR-CE]

Personally, I think the best advancement in CD-R/W technology to date was buffer under-run prevention and reduced CPU usage by CD writing software. Once that was done, it allowed me to do something else while my CDs are burning, so I don't even care (most of the time) whether it takes 45 minutes or 5 minutes to burn a CD. Of course, once it got down to 5 minutes, I just saw no point at all to getting a new drive until my current drive just doesn't work any more.

Still, I'm glad to see they're still improving write speed, so that when I do go to buy a new one it won't just be the same drive again.

Re:Yeah, this is SO worthwhile

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, you ARE the Joe Sixpack that you and everyone else keeps mentioning.

Re:Yeah, this is SO worthwhile

[Anonymous Coward]

Congratulations, you've just joined the Slashdot Technological Fundamentalist society, the group of people who dismiss any performance improvements as 'useless', and who fail to realize that incremental changes eventually add up to large changes.

40x already?

[velocipenguin]

I just bought a shiny, expensive new 24x burner a few months ago. Stupid technological advancements make me look bad... *grumble*

Re:40x already?

[cpex]

but I am still using that 4x I bought for $250 ;-)

to be correct...

[gosand]

To be technically correct, they have a MAX speed of 40X. They don't burn at that speed throughout the entire burn, they may reach that speed at some point though. That's why the actual burn time of a CD has pretty much reached it's limit. Going from 8x to 16x is not the same as going from 16x to 32x.

Re:to be correct...

[timeOday]

So how many minutes to burn a 700 meg CDROM on 8, 16, 32, and 40x?

(Yes, I'll feel dumb if that's in the article, but I tried to visit and it's slashdotted.)

Re:to be correct...

[kzinti]

I don't know what the article says, but I can tell you from firsthand experience. I have an Asus 40/12/48x drive. I've been quite please with it. I did some timing tests when I first got it, and as I recall it was on the order of 3:30 to burn a 700MB disk at 40x, but dropped only to about 4:00 at 32x and was still in the neighborhood of four and a half minutes at 24x. My memory may be off by thirty seconds in either direction, but the times for the upper speeds were very similar (due, of course to the limitation the first poster noted).

--Jim

Re:to be correct...

[Schnapple]

Burned a 700MB disc last night with the Lite-On in the article. Nero got it done in 3:30.

Re:to be correct...

[DeadSeaTrolls]

To be honest there are a lot of variables here.

Most of the media on the market is total shit. CMC sell's a lot under the Imation/Memorex/BrandX names even selling it as "40X". Most drives can't do these at 40X, it's going to take a while for quality 40/48X media to arrive. Many vendor are using the same ATIP idendifier codes over 4 to 6 generations of media, so its real hard to determine what you have bought. I can't begin to imagine the problems people are having at 48X, I'd recommend you test what you've written whenever using a new drive/media combination.

700MB at 40X is about 3:03 minutes, the TEAC is no speed demon writing the TOC often meaning it can get beaten by 32X drives (3:30 - 3:45). The NEC 40x (9100A) is a rocket, on certain media it can do 700MB in 2:45.

Re:to be correct...

[kzinti]

Most of the media on the market is total shit. CMC sell's a lot under the Imation/Memorex/BrandX names even selling it as "40X".

I have a load of 40x CD-Rs stamped TDK, but actually made by CMC. I've found them to be quite reliable even when written at 40x. When I first got my 40x drive, I did a series of tests, writing out 700MB of random data, reading it back in, and comparing checksums, and I regularly check my CDs with the same technique. I've written thirty or so CDs at 40x onto CMC 40x media and to date have only produced one coaster that I know of. (Even that coaster probably wasn't the fault of the media, as I was hammering the disk and the cdrecord FIFO dropped to 0% during writing. The drive was supposed to have buffer underrun protection, but evidently it didn't work in this case.) I consider one coaster in thirty to be within acceptable limits, and certainly better than "total shit".

--Jim

Re:to be correct...

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing is, when burning a cd, as you go along the speed increases to a peak (say 40X) and then slowly declines back down to a stop. The majority of the time (~60-70%) is spent either accelerating or deccelerating. That other 30-40% is spent at 2/3 of the max, IIRC. That is why your 'old' 32X burner will not feel much slower than your 'new' 40X.

Re:to be correct...

[DeadSeaTrolls]

>certainly better than "total shit"

Your mileage may vary...

The drive manufactures don't like the current CMC (97:26:66, 79:59:74) . The graphs I've seen are quite horrible. CMC does have some newer media with a different ATIP code (97:26:66, 79:59:73) that is orders of magnitude better but I haven't seen any of it in retail. I'll look for the TDK media, the last batch of 40X TDK I bought was made by Ritek.

Your previous post suggests your seeing 3:30 at 40X and 4:00 at 32X. I'm not sure who makes the drive mech your using, but I've got 32X drives that can do 700MB (every sector on the disc) at 3:30 or better. 40X should be closer to 3:03 or about 27X+ in linear terms. Are you sure that it's going at 40X, some drive will let you set 40X as a write speed but never get there, or drop back. Buffer underrun protection doesn't help fix bad media, if the drive is struggling at the outer edge it's because the media is marginal.

Most drives are pretty good at not making coasters, even with dodgy media, they just slow down. So if you seen one burn take 3:03 and another at 3:30 it's because it had to slow down to adapt to the media.

The media you see in the store today with arbitary stickers saying it's 40X isn't the same as the media I expect to see in a month or two. I'm not saying that CMC can't make good media, just that the stuff you can buy today marked at 40X was the same stuff that was marked 32X a week before.

Re:to be correct...

[Afrosheen]

AHAHAHAHAHA!!! I can't believe these new drives are this slow.

My 16x10x40 Pacific Digital burner turns out full 700mb cd's in about 4 minutes. Suckers!

Re:to be correct...

[DeadSeaTrolls]

I don't think it "slowly declines". From the point it switches to 40X the RPM should increase to the outer edge. The data is leaving the PC into the drive's buffer at 40X rates for the entire 40X zone.

Most of the time during the transitions it's actually calibrating the laser hence the observable speed dips. The drives could transition a lot more seamlessly if not for the calibration. I've seen some pretty big delays when the drive is trying to go to 40X but finally decides the media just won't cut it.

The improvement in time from a 32X to a 40X is often negliable, any you'll only see it if you fill the disc. Some 32X drive can match 40X's, while others have 3, 4 or 5 speed zones.

Re:to be correct...

[Anonymous Coward]

And all my Pacific Digital media has CD Rot. I'd suggest you look into another brand of CD Burner.

Re:to be correct...

[slaker]

95% of the time, it ends up being about three minutes at everything over 24X. If you're talking edge-to-edge 701MB slightly-overburned discs, you gain a real-life 10 or 15 seconds for every bump over 24X, so a 48X drive winds up being all of about 30 seconds faster in burning.

I just duped a whole bunch of 645MB discs on a pair of LiteOn 48x CD-R drives and Nero's timer, including LeadIn/LeadOut, hit 2:45 every single time.

Re:to be correct...

[kzinti]

ATIP info from disk:
Indicated writing power: 5
Is not unrestricted
Is not erasable
Disk sub type: Medium Type A, low Beta category (A-) (2)
ATIP start of lead in: -11634 (97:26/66)
ATIP start of lead out: 359849 (79:59/74)

Your previous post suggests your seeing 3:30 at 40X and 4:00 at 32X

Those are ballpark times at best, +/- 30 sec... dimly remembered from a couple of months back. So, just for the sake of asking, who is making good quality 40x media, and what brands names are they being sold under?

--Jim

Re:to be correct...

[DeadSeaTrolls]

The Verbatim 40X (Mitshibishi Chemical Corp. MMC) is the best I've seen so far, I'd recommend the media on the spindle. Verbatim (sub of MMC) is one of the few companies that makes it's own media, so you know what you've bought without loading it into a drive to check the ATIP codes.

Given a month or so, the media in retail will be a higher grade, a hopefully have different ATIP codes so the drives can tell the difference. Might have to upgrade the firmware, because a lot of these drives have tables in them with supported speeds/strategies.

Re:to be correct...

[Anonymous Coward]

Media? Could have something to do with you being a cheapskate and buying some chiggety-china nickle-a-piece cdrw's. Plus it's not like I need cds for archival backup anyway, ALL cd's regardless of brand or media quality get bit rot after 10 years or less.

SCSI CDRW drives?

[guacamole]

Does anyone still develop SCSI CDRW drives? I need to connect a couple to a unix workstion and using IDE/USB/Firewire is not an option.

Re:SCSI CDRW drives?

[thesolo]

Does anyone still develop SCSI CDRW drives?

Fortunately, yes! Plextor makes 2 excellent Ultra SCSI models, a 12/4/32 and a 12/10/32. Both are available in internal & external models. You can view the 12/10/32 model here.

I've owned Plextor IDE & SCSI drives before, and never had a problem with any of them; I actually can't recommend them highly enough. While I wish they would make a faster SCSI model, I'm at least happy that they are still making SCSI models at all!

Re:SCSI CDRW drives?

[great throwdini]

Does anyone still develop SCSI CDRW drives?

Plextor does, has, and probably always will as long as SCSI means anything in the marketplace.

Re:SCSI CDRW drives?

[Neon Spiral Injector]

I see Plextor is getting into the DVD-ROM market too. I'm just hoping the make a SCSI CD/DVD (re-)writer.

Re:SCSI CDRW drives?

[guacamole]

But 12/4/32 is a two year old model. I wish they made a 40X version with SCSI interface ..

Re:SCSI CDRW drives?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, Sanyo makes a 24x10x40 Burn-Proof capable Ultra-SCSI burner called the Sanyo BP5. From my personal experience, it's quite good.

Re:SCSI CDRW drives?

[Zathrus]

As others have mentioned, Plextor does. I believe there are some Toshiba models still available too. Just do a search on Pricewatch and you'll see who has what. I know that Newegg carries the Plextor.

Of course, you'll pay a hefty premium ($50 more for the Plextor SCSI, or 300% compared to Lite-On, Cyberdrive, or other inexpensive CD-RWs) and get a much slower drive (12/10/32 vs 40/12/40 or 40/12/52).

Unfortunately you don't have any choice in the matter for your instance. But people building workstation PCs with all SCSI are (by and large) just screwing themselves now.

Re:SCSI CDRW drives?

[Jucius Maximus]

"Does anyone still develop SCSI CDRW drives?"

Of course! Go and browse the plextor site and you can find a nice selection of modern CDRw drives.

Re:SCSI CDRW drives?

[velocipenguin]

SCSI drives and controllers are always expensive. However, they can provide an ENORMOUS increase in performance compared to ATA drives.

Re:SCSI CDRW drives?

[Zathrus]

But in the real world, on a desktop PC, they don't in nearly all cases (yes, someone doing something very specialized can, but, guess what? You're not most cases).

I had an all SCSI system. I finally got tired of how slow and noisy it was, plus the Plextor CD-RW was toast for the 3rd time in 3 years. Replaced it all with IDE and the disk subsystem became vastly faster.

Yeah, it was older SCSI drives -- SCSI2, but even new they're more expensive than an equivalent IDE drive. The price/performance ratio just isn't there for SCSI on the desktop anymore.

Oh, and this is an older system with only ATA33, so the IDE drive is actually being limited by the max transfer rate of the bus. And the new drive is over twice the capacity of the three older SCSI drives. The new CD-RW is 52/32/12 vs the 4/2/1 that was in there... and while 3 years newer the new CD-RW cost all of $60 shipped. The original drive cost over $300.

Re:SCSI CDRW drives?

[Anonymous Coward]

You say

they can provide an ENORMOUS increase in performance

The parent says

a much slower drive (12/10/32 vs 40/12/40 or 40/12/52)

So, I can pay a huge wad of cash extra on a SCSI controller, drive & cables, and get a slower drive in the process, but you say that this expensive setup will offer me enormous peformance gains. Even though I have a slower drive. Right.

Re:SCSI CDRW drives?

[velocipenguin]

I was referring to a comment that said those who purchase SCSI drives for workstation use are screwing themselves over. I was not directly referring to the speed of a particular drive.

Re:SCSI CDRW drives?

[Anonymous Coward]

That was true maybe 5 or so years ago, but nowadays intelligent IDE controllers are just as smart as SCSI controllers.

Re:SCSI CDRW drives?

[velocipenguin]

It's true that SCSI gear is more expensive. However, often the performance gain is quite significant. For average desktop use, there may not be a huge performance gain, but you are quite correct in stating that they are useful for specialized cases. SCSI drives are marvelous for audio/video editing - the seek time is very low and they can move large files around very quickly. I have never seen a buffer underrun occur with a SCSI CD burner. For the average desktop user, SCSI is too expensive to be viable, but it's great if you need high performance.

Re:SCSI CDRW drives?

[GigsVT]

SCSI drives and controllers are always expensive. However, they can provide an ENORMOUS increase in performance compared to ATA drives.

You are like that guy in that south park episode that was frozen in the early 90's, aren't you?

One can no longer argue ENORMOUS performance increases due to SCSI, it just isn't like that any more. Argue that SCSI is a better technology (it is), argue that SCSI is more flexible and not a hacked together system, but don't argue performance, because it's just not a valid argument anymore.

Re:SCSI CDRW drives?

[Carl Drougge]

As others have said, yes.

But Yamaha also makes a SCSI->IDE converter, I use it to attach an IDE-burner to a SCSI-bus and it works fine. For some reason it goes at 5MHz sync with my burner, even though it can do 10MHz async, and does it if I put a HD instead of a burner on it.

But still, I can burn at 16x just fine, and replaceing the drive is cheap if it breaks. (I use a sony drive, it might not work with all models..)

The converter cost me 495 SEK (about $50).

Re:SCSI CDRW drives?

[TibbonZero]

But why have they stayed at 12x? Those burners rock, but 12x? I love the disk to disk copying with two of them. It can get around most copy protection with bit for bit copying... not that I would ever copy anything i didn't own... just backups :)

Re:SCSI CDRW drives?

[ChronosX]

It's very possible to get buffer underruns with a SCSI burner. I'm still using my Plextor 8x SCSI burner, and I've had my share of buffer under runs. Normally this won't happen, but if you get the circumstances right. The bus mastering employed by a decent SCSI card keeps the data flowing in a favorable way most of the time.

However, I would wager this point is completely moot if you buy a new CD burner, as virtually all of them come with some form of underrun protection circuitry.

Re:SCSI CDRW drives?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the place where most scsi drives really beat out IDE drives even to this day is in track-to-track seek times. The heads on scsi drives are usually lighter and the acuators are more powerful (not because they are scsi, but because scsi buyers usually care more about that stuff than most ide buyers), the result is that for comparably-sized drives you will often see track-to-track seeks being 2x faster on the scsi disk than on the ide disk. Track-to-track is a lot more important than full-seek which is what you usually see quoted as seek performance on most hard disks.

Couple that with the higher rpms like 15,000 and a scsi disk can seriously out perform even a top-of-the-line IDE disk. Of course it will seriously out-drain your bank account too, but that's another story.

Re:SCSI CDRW drives?

[shepd]

>But 12/4/32 is a two year old model.

That's because Plextor offcially stopped developing them at that point.

I wouldn't look to Plextor for any more CD-R stuff, they've decided to go cheap and consumer level rather than professional (strongly indicated by their lack of SCSI development).

Go to Yamaha instead. They still develop SCSI drives.

Re:SCSI CDRW drives?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ugh, why do people keep saying this? SCSI DRIVES ARE NO BETTER AT COPYING CDs THAN ATAPI DRIVES. In fact, most of the SCSI drives are worse because they don't have the DAO-RAW option. It has nothing to do with the interface however.

And there's no such thing as a bit-for-bit copy when it comes to CDs (or any magnetic media for that matter). It doesn't work that way.

Re:SCSI CDRW drives?

[ewhac]

I've actaully been doing a fair amount of checking on this very subject over the last few days. I'm a SCSI bigot, I have been since the Amiga days, my system is all SCSI all the time, and it's going to stay that way, thank you. (And yes, all my ten-year-old Amiga drives are still directly readable on my rig.)

However, I don't have a CD-R/RW drive yet. I do have a Plextor 40x CD-ROM drive with a Wide Ultra SCSI interface, so my first thought was to get a Plextor SCSI CD-RW drive.

Yikes! $250 for a 12x writer? I think not. Other manufacturers aren't too much better. The best deal I've found so far for native SCSI is the Yamaha CRW-F1ZS, which is a 44x drive for around $220-250.

However, if you're willing to be a little sneaky (and live on the bleeding edge), there's a company called ACard that makes an IDE-to-SCSI bridge. This little gadget slaps on the back of any IDE drive, effectively turning it into a SCSI device. They are available in wide and narrow flavors. They also have LVD flavors. The best prices I've found so far for the single-ended versions are around $70 for narrow, and $74 for wide. I haven't found any prices for the LVD versions.

For most hard drives, this is a huge win. You can easily pay $200 for a SCSI drive, and the largest size you can typically find is a paltry 18G. Subtract $70 for the IDE-SCSI bridge, and you can buy a fscking huge IDE drive for $130. However, for CD-RW drives, it doesn't put you too far ahead of the game in terms of cost. 40x IDE writers are about $150. Add $70 for the bridge, and you're back in the $220-250 range, which is what you can get a native SCSI drive for.

And there's a problem: While hard drives and CD-ROM drives are fairly standardized in terms of command packet format, CD-RW drives aren't yet. As such, ACard won't guarantee their bridge will work with the CD-RW drive of your choice, since it may require an untranslateable packet. (They've only tested against, and guarantee interoperability with, Ricoh drives.)

Hope this helps.

Schwab

Re:SCSI CDRW drives?

[cmuller]

> Of course, you'll pay a hefty premium ($50 more
> for the Plextor SCSI, or 300% compared to
> Lite-On, Cyberdrive, or other inexpensive CD-RWs)
> and get a much slower drive (12/10/32 vs 40/12/40
> or 40/12/52).

There is still Yamaha: it's latest "F1" (44x I
think) is going to be available in:
- internal IDE
- internal SCSI (but more expensive)
- external USB
- external SCSI
- external Firewire
- combo external USB+Firewire

BTW, SCSI is still much better quality when it
comes to disks: not only performance but also
MTBF etc.

Cheers,
Christophe.

= "If there is a better solution... find it." -- Thomas Edison =

Re:SCSI CDRW drives?

[Anonymous Coward]

Problem is no plextor drive properly does the efm encoding necessary to dupe most copyprotection.

Re:SCSI CDRW drives?

[Reziac]

IMO there are two possible reasons to go with a SCSI CDRW:

For slower systems where otherwise the IDE interface chews up too many CPU cycles, leading to burning lots of frisbees. (This is why I went with a SCSI CDRW in my P233, tho I have an IDE CDRW in my P3-550)

For systems where you're short on IDE channels due to a slew of HDs. (This is why I'm about to replace the P233's IDE CDROM with a SCSI CDROM -- to free up the 2nd IDE channel so I can add another hard disk without screwing around with an adapter card)

Also, it's very easy to swap SCSI devices around, with no need to add/remove drivers or muck about in Device Mangler to keep Windows happy -- most of the time one need merely power up the SCSI device (or the system if it's internal), start DOS or Windows, and it works. This is why I love my SCSI scanner. (Dunno what Linux does WRT swapping SCSI devices -- anyone care to expound??)

Otherwise, tho, if it's not a server that needs every scrap of performance it can get, I'd agree that for most purposes IDE is more cost-effective and good enough in performance.

Ex-squeeze me?

[rocjoe71]

...and the speed-daemon...

Oh my, you've been living in an different uni(x)verse for too long! You should have said "speed-demon" (no 'a').

Twilight of the technology

[RobertNotBob]

Well I guess CDR's will be around a bit longer.

Still though, I wonder how long CD's will be around with writable DVD's sitting on the shelf at the local CompUSA.

Re:Twilight of the technology

[unDiWahn]

I expect they'll be around quite a while -- personally I'd still rather spend $20 for 50 cd-rs, and $80 for a fast CD-Burner, than $50 for 5 dvd-rs, and $450 for a slow DVD-Burner.

Anyone know how long it takes to burn a 4.7GB DVD on one of those drives?

Re:Twilight of the technology

[Anonymous Coward]

i hope CD-Rs will be around for a long long long time, i am not in the least bit interested in DVD technology right now, i will wait a few years and let the DVD technology mature and the cost go WAY down first, right now the prices for DVD technology is rediculus...

Re:Twilight of the technology

[SmallFurryCreature]

About the same amount of time that 3,25 inch floppies have been available? Or indeed 5.5 inch ones.

Re:Twilight of the technology

[killmenow]

Burning a 4.7G data DVD-R on my Pioneer DVR-A03 takes about 45 minutes.

Re:Twilight of the technology

[DeadSeaTrolls]

The Ricoh 5125 drive which is sold by Sony (DRU120), Philips (228), HP (200i), Memorex etc. does 2.4X and completes DVD+R and +RW 4.7GB (Really 4.38GB isn't it!) in 25 minutes.

Re:Twilight of the technology

[Anonymous Coward]

a long time...

can you go get a spindle of 100 DVD-R discs for $14.00? I can get CD-R's (32X) at that price all day long without trying and driving more than 15 minutes dow the street.

There is no way in hell I will ever buy a DVD-R until the media is dirt cheap as CDR or I need to burn over 700Meg on a regular basis.

Re:Twilight of the technology

[King_TJ]

Well, the low price of CDRs only came about recently, as sales of the drives reached a "critical mass" that allowed bulk sales of blank CDR media.

It looks like DVD writers are following much the same trend that CDR drives did. Therefore, I'd say DVD writable technology will displace CDR/CDRW by the end of next year. Xmas-time is always a key factor, as the home user typically gets these types of upgrades as gifts around the holiday season.

Last Xmas, DVD-R/RW made its intro. (Xmas provided the excuse to get the units on the shelves of stores like Best Buy and CompUSA at sub $500 pricing.) This Xmas, you can be sure DVD writers will be on a lot of holiday shopping lists, and help make them more "mainstream". By *next* Xmas, they ought to start taking over the world of CDRs.

Linux tested ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Has anyone tested this on a Linux box to see if it will perform fully or does it need windows drivers to reach full potential ?

Re:Linux tested ?

[velocipenguin]

Generally, IDE disks don't really need separate drivers... Under Linux, you shouldn't need anything but mkisofs and cdrecord.

Re:Linux tested ?

[Raleel]

I believe that on most ide burners you need to use the ide-scsi module to get cdrecord to see it. At least that's how it is on all my redhat boxes.

Drop a hdX=ide-scsi into your lilo/grub line.

Re:Linux tested ?

[ajrs]

you also need the scsi on ide emulator for cdrecord. This might require special boot parameters, or even re-compiling the kernal.

Re:Linux tested ?

[13Echo]

99.99% of standard IDE CD burners work fine in Linux. You just need to enable an SCSI emulation module. Only weird, proprietary CD drives have problems. This goes with any OS, actually.

By the way. I want to share with you folks that there is an awesome KDE front-end for the standard CDRTools for Linux. It is called Arson. http://arson.sourceforge.net/. When I switched to Linux, I was looking for a front-end that worked like Nero for Windows. Arson was the best thhing available. It is currently missing a few minor data CD features, but if you know how to make an ISO from the command line, arson can burn it with just a click from within Konq. It is a beta program now, but it will be pretty awesome when it is done (it is already nice). It works great for burning those MP3s and OGGs to a music CD. It can make VCDs too.

Media

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn, the last time I burned anything it was at 8x. Googling around it seems like media rated for 40x is available, I guess I missed all of the cool advances like 24x and 36x. Oh well, my next burning system will be DVD-R anway.

spin the disc really fast?

[lawngnome]

do these new drives spin the disc really fast or use some kind of multi-write technology? The article didn't mention it (as I can see)
I remember reading that the current drives are reaching a limit where a disc will shatter because it is spun too fast, could these drives have a problem with that?

Re:spin the disc really fast?

[velocipenguin]

There are already 56X and faster CD-ROM drives. Those don't tend to shatter discs. I don't think 40X poses any significant dangers to the media used.

Re:spin the disc really fast?

[CausticPuppy]

do these new drives spin the disc really fast or use some kind of multi-write technology? The article didn't mention it (as I can see)

A 40X writer doesn't spin the disc any faster than a single-laser 40X reader would.

I had a kenwood "52X" drive that actually spun the disc at about 16X and had multiple beam pickup... much quieter, very fast, but didn't last very long. Now it's unusable because it gets so hot, and won't read half my CDR's.

Re:spin the disc really fast?

[scotch]

I had one of those Kenwood pieces of shit, too. Worked great, for a little while. Will no long read anything. Anyone for a class action law suit.

Ignorance is bliss

[Tex Bravado]

I needed a CD burner in a hurry, ran down to Fry's Electronics, and grabbed the one that
looked like the best price/performance: a Sony CRX195 40/12/48.
$89.99 with a $20.00 rebate.
I installed it, spent 3 days trying to figure out how to get my Linux box to see it, and then it
worked. I didn't even know 40X was fast :-)

Effect on life of a CD?

[Midnight Thunder]

Sometime back on /. there was article on how spinning a CD too fast would result in a shattered CD. Now I would be interested in knowing how high spin speeds, below shattering speed, would effect the life span of a CD - would we see pit damage due to heat or any other effects?

Re:Effect on life of a CD?

[velocipenguin]

The data on a stamped CD is stored on an aluminum substrate. It's HIGHLY unlikely that a CD-ROM drive could produce enough heat to cause thermal damage to that substrate. CD-Rs don't use pits at all - they just burn away the dye. They are probably more susceptible to very high temperatures, but I still don't think a drive could reach temps high enough to damage things.

Re:Effect on life of a CD?

[swb]

I've noticed that audio CDs burned at 8x on my burners (an HP and a Philips) have a tendency to skip more in my car and fail to mount at all on older audio CD players. CDs burned slower (4x or even 2x) tend to skip less or not at all in my car and are readable on some finicky audio CD players.

I haven't noticed a difference in longevity or usability in data discs, though.

Re:Effect on life of a CD?

[velocipenguin]

I've never had problems with audio discs burned on my 24X Mitsumi. Maybe I'm just lucky.

Re:Effect on life of a CD?

[velocipenguin]

ALL audio CD players read discs at 1X. The speed at which the disc was burned does not determine how quickly it can be read - that's entirely dependent on the drive you're reading the disc on, and that speed will be 1X if it's an audio CD player. Audio CDs need to be read at the correct speed in order for the audio to play back correctly and at the right speed. Data CDs can be read at any speed because data files do not always have to be accessed with the same timing.

Re:Effect on life of a CD?

[SnotRag]

One of my customers did actually blow up a CD in their drive, I replaced it yesterday. It was a 52x LG (I think) CD-ROM, the CD in there was in about 100 pieces. Don't know if the disc in there was a CD or CDR, but I'm guessing the former...

Re:Effect on life of a CD?

[Shabazz]

I have a Plex 16x, and I burn all my audio CD's at that speed. I have yet to see a single problem playing one of my CD's anywhere. I try to use good media, but even el cheapo stuff seems to work OK. I think this is an issue that is highly dependent on your burner.

Re:Effect on life of a CD?

[swb]

Maybe its a medium issue too. The last batch of media I had was a 100 pack spindle that I just recently got finished with. I think it might have been just in spec for 8x burning. The new spindles are 16x, I should try some 8x audio cds and see.

The thing that frosted me about 4x burning was it seemed like I always wanted a new CD in a hurry (leaving for trip, etc) and with TOC and all the other finishing, it always seemed to take 25 minutes or so for a full disc. 12 minutes I could have lived with.

Re:Effect on life of a CD?

[adolf]

Might be a media issue, but:

A few years ago, when everyone was buying and selling 4x burners like hotcakes because they were just so damn fast, I picked up an 8x Plextor.

Various forums and newsgroups were still full of messages from people having various problems with various combinations of burner, media, and reader. People were generally having a difficult time making things work, some or all of the time. Because of this, I decided to research things a bit before dropping any serious amount of money on CD-Rs.

So. I picked up two samples each of some ~10 varieties of CD-R. Maxell, Memorex, Sony, TDK, the "new" 8x-rated Kodak, the "old" 4x-rated Kodak, high- and low-end Ricoh, something called "CD Rocket Fuel", and so on.

I burned a bunch of identical audio CDs onto these discs, and then collected a variety of players with which to play them (an abused playstation, an Aiwa portable, a Carver rackmount unit, and cdparanoia+stopwatch on the 32x Plextor CD-ROM in the same machine), hoping to get an idea of the error rate of various combinations.

Results? 2x-rated media burned fine at 8x. 4x media burned fine at 8x. The only 8x-rated media in the test was the Kodak gold/green and the S&F "Rocket Fuel".

The Kodak, the priciest of the whole lot, performed least well. The anti-skip on the Aiwa portable took longer to fill its buffer, the Playstation was more susceptible to shaking-induced skips, and cdparanoia took longer to read it.

Which was kind of a bummer, because they were advertising shelf lives in the range of 100 years and I'd like my data to outlive me.

Since then, I've bought a few spindles of TDK which I've been happy with at home. I did pick up a batch of Verbatim blanks which were absolute trash, though, and would not read in my (non-abused) Playstation at all.

In the studio, where we had the same 8x Plextor, we had no difficulty, complaint, or general bad vibes from using the cheapest media we can find. Mostly, this was because it was a money-losing enterprise, and a few cents saved per blank added up to, say, getting few pizzas one night instead of a bag full of $0.99 cheeseburgers from Hardees.

Since this experience, I've been using whatever I can find cheap, though I will pay a bit more for unbranded blanks.

(100 packs of some unbranded Asian-imported generic knockoff CD-R are on sale right now at a local department store for something like $15. I intend to buy the remaining stock on payday.)

Re:Effect on life of a CD?

[geekopus]

Sorry if this sounds really anal, but after working as a process engineer at a CD plant for 4 years, I can most definately tell you that the substrate isn't aluminum. It's plastic.

The aluminum is nothing more than a reflective layer; the data is molded into the plastic.

Having said that, you're absolutely right that it would be very unlikely that a CD-ROM drive could produce enough heat to damage the disc.

The point about the CD-R's is mostly correct, however they don't burn the dye away. The dye just works to absorb certain wavelengths from the write laser. All CD-R's come with a smooth (well, mostly smooth; it does "wobble" a little for time coding, etc.) groove instead of a spiral of pits. When the dye in a certain area has heated enough, it deforms the groove, causing a read laser to have a slightly different return at that point. In essence, it becomes a "pit". Since the dye only acts on specific (infrared) wavelengths, the discs are fairly robust; however leaving one in the sunlight for a length of time is guaranteed to destroy it. It is doubtful that a drive could produce that kind of radiation in any meaningful amounts.

BTW, one thing that is rarely mentioned about really fast burners is the write laser power output. It is one of the reasons that burning doesn't go faster; not because of limitations in the substrate.

Sorry for the rant.

Re:Effect on life of a CD?

[geekopus]

Also, just wanted to point out something else related to CD-R burning.

Lower speed burning will tend to make larger deformations in the plastic (the write laser was able to pump more energy into the substrate because the plastic stayed above it longer). This makes lower speed recordings more robust in older, finicky players. Of course, it is possible to make too large of a deformation, but that's why the disc provides the recorder information on what power to use. The disc also provides a "calibration" area on the inside of the disc (before the data starts) so that the laser can write and then read back to make sure it's all going to plan. Don't know if most burners use this, but the specification allows for it.

As an analogy, turn on your hairdryer and run your hand in front of the nozzle first slow and then fast. Which time did your hand get warmer? The slow pass, of course.

Frisbee/Coaster turn out

[Dark Nexus]

As I recall, each speed increase turns out more frisbees than the last. 10x burns less reliably than 8x, etc.

Not to mention that CD-RW drives DO have a theoretical maximum number of CDs they can burn before they're worn out to the point of turning out NOTHING but frisbees...

Given those 2 points in mind, then what's the point for most people? I'm sure small software or music studios might be able to make use of it (probably cheaper, or at least easier than having their CDs pressed, especially for small runs), but I can't really see it being that practical for the home user very often (yet), especially since I have yet to see a CD-R rated for more than 24x, with most being 16x and the Plextor at least (apparantly) won't let you burn at a higher speed than the CD-R(W) is rated for.

Re:Frisbee/Coaster turn out

[velocipenguin]

Each speed increase will turn out more coasters if you're using crappy-ass media that was run over by a truck. If you use good blanks, you won't have any problems. My 24X drive has never burned a coaster, while my 2X model churned out quite a few. I think it has a lot more to do with the quality of the media and equipment than with the speed of the drive.

Re:Frisbee/Coaster turn out

[Zathrus]

As I recall, each speed increase turns out more frisbees than the last. 10x burns less reliably than 8x, etc

If you have a first-generation crappy drive, or use media that isn't designed for that burn speed then that's true.

theoretical maximum number of CDs they can burn

Yes, and HD's have a theoretical average number of hours before failure. So? All mechanical systems fail at one point or another.

yet to see a CD-R rated for more than 24x

You haven't looked recently, have you? Try here, or here, or here.

Plextor at least (apparantly) won't let you burn at a higher speed than the CD-R(W) is rated for

That's dependant on the software, not the hardware. I know you can turn it off in Nero, and probably most other CD burning software.

Re:Frisbee/Coaster turn out

[Anonymous Coward]

What a load of crap. I regularly burn 8x-rated Imation blanks on my Plextor at 40x (~3 minute burn time for ~700megs). They work great.

Oh, and the point for most people is that they _don't have to wait as long_ to finish something they want done. That's usually what drives technological progress. Look into it.

Re:Frisbee/Coaster turn out

[fire-eyes]

As I recall, each speed increase turns out more frisbees than the last. 10x burns less reliably than 8x, etc.

I've probably had 3 frisbees out of a hundred disks both r and rw with my plextor that is mentioned.

Not to mention that CD-RW drives DO have a theoretical maximum number of CDs they can burn before they're worn out to the point of turning out NOTHING but frisbees...

Interesting, I've never heard of this. Care to elaborate?

Re:Frisbee/Coaster turn out

[shepd]

How interesting, considering my 2x HP drive now turns out coasters 75% of the time, but my 40x LG drive hasn't turned out a coaster yet, even on $0.26/CAN media. The store told me not to burn them at anything above 8x, but they work without a hitch (even for audio in an older car CD player).

My local Future Shop sells 32x Verbatim media, and I'm sure with only a small amount of effort I can buy 40x media.

The nice thing about faster drives is that they have to be built better than slower drives to handle working at the higher speeds. My 2x burner has crapped out, but I expect my 40x drive to last a long time if I only used it at 16x.

Now, IMGO, you're lying, or just not tuned into the CDR market. Which is it?

Re:Frisbee/Coaster turn out

[Anonymous Coward]

The maximum speed at which a blank can be burned isn't a software dependant setting, it's the CD-RW drive's job. For example, if I put a crappy blank in the writer, Nero only goes up to 16x burn-speed; change to a better blank, and automagically the listbox has 24x, 32x and 40x. For TEAC CD-W540E, there's a tool on their Japan site which allows you to disable this "blank quality check".

I have the plextor 40x......

[wo1verin3]

but my problem is finding 40x media, I can usually only find media certified for 32x. Does anyone have any experience using 32x media at higher speeds?

Re:I have the plextor 40x......

[DeadSeaTrolls]

Most of the media currently on the shelves is pretty much worthless. "Certified" adds no credibility. Burn it on your own drive and validate it wrote the data without leaving unreadable portions. Once you have media that works for you buy enough, because next time you go to the store it'll be something else.

Most of the drives I've evaluated have serious problems writing the current media from CMC Magnetics (check ATIP disc info in your burner software). This media is being sold by Imation/Memorex and a bunch of others, all there media from 16X to 40X identifies itself with the same code. Most drive won't even try 40X on this media, locking down to 24X or 32X, those that do try 40X can't always sustain it, especially on the outer edge.

Also seen problems with Ritek 40X sold by TDK.

Given that CMC and Ritek probably represent 95%+ of the market things aren't too good.

Some higher grade media should arrive shortly (I hope).

The Verbatim 40X (Mitshibishi Chemical Corp. MMC) is the best I've seen so far, I'd recommend the media on the spindle. Verbatim is one of the few companies that makes it's own media, so you know what you've bought without loading it into a drive to check the ATIP codes.

Re:I have the plextor 40x......

[abcxyz]

Phillips has 40x media available, a special right now for 100 pack spindle for $20, with a $20 rebate at Best Buy. (That's here in Raleigh, NC, but probably have it at other places as well).

Re:I have the plextor 40x......

[WNight]

I haven't found the speed rating to be very accurate. I've got a 24x burner and I've use media that was unrated, all the way through 24x rated.

It's coastered a few very old CDRs when I forgot to set the speed to 8x (they were unrated) but this was the only speed related problem.

I've burned 8x certified media at 24x, and it seems to work in just as many readers as the other disks.

Actually, my biggest problem has been cheap media that happened to be rated for 24x. The spindle said Memorex, but the disks were unbranded white and came up as CMC Magnetics when I checked them. They never actually failed a burn, but only one drive other than the burner could ever read them and the burner was really slow at it even. I just checked a 2-month old disk and I got a ton of read errors.

I've never had the problem before where a disk I burned was only readable in some drives, so I attribute it completely to these disks. But, a friend tried them in his old burner and they seemed to work fine. I never tried them as 2x, so maybe they were just very very over rated.

So, I guess the answer is, good companies who make their own media will put on a good margin of error to make sure you don't coaster and blame them. You can double or triple most listed ratings from all the big names, but get unbranded media and you're lucky if it burns at all. I normally use cheap cheap disks, like GigaStor, but those CMC ones were the first totally unbranded ones and I guess they were counting on the fact that you couldn't identify them in the future. (Like motherboards so cheap they don't come with a company name.)

Re:I have the plextor 40x......

[jglow]

I use verbatim 32x on my 40x burner and it works prefectly. The burning program will generally just give a message that it's dropping the speed to 32x due to the media. I actually haven't tried a full 40x burn yet.

Multiple lasers

[Spazholio]

I don't pretend to be remotely knowledgeable on the subject, but would it be possible to use multiple lasers in one CDRW to get around the whole higher-velocity = shattered CDs problem? Seems like a feasible idea, at least in theory. Anyone know of any companies who have tried this?

Re:Multiple lasers

[Kredal]

Somebody (I forget who, Maxtor maybe?) made a CD drive that had 7 lasers working in parallel... it did speed up the drive, but it still wasn't cost effective, so the idea never took off.

Re:Multiple lasers

[Kredal]

I know, it's bad to reply to yourself.. so sue me.

The drive was made by Kenwood.

Re:Multiple lasers

[SamBaughman]

The drive was made by Kenwood. I owned one. The technology was called TrueX and was developed by Zen Research plc (http://www.zenresearch.com). Zen Relearch plc's page appears only to be a death notice.

It was an interesting technology. Quiet CD-ROM drives with massive (up to 72x) speed. Just pray that there wasn't much random access, as the seek time on the drives stunk. It also couldn't extract audio data well above 4x.

I believe Zen had plans (at one time) to extend the technology to DVD's and CD-R's, but as I never saw any products, either I'm hallucinating, or it just wouldn't work the way they wanted.

But it was cool technology.

Re:Multiple lasers

[Anonymous Coward]

It was Kenwood, but only for CD-ROMs, not for CD burners.

/.-ed again

[Anonymous Coward]

please... what's the use of putting up links to sites which surely are going to be /.-ed ???

please tell me...

Re:/.-ed again

[Spazholio]

Maybe Techware Labs offended the poster in some way? Figured a good /.ing would be a good way to teach them a lesson? =)

What?

[shepd]

No 40x LG review? (I can't get at the article, so I'm going to assume what slashdot said was true).

Cheap, and reasonably reliable. Works like a champ in linux. I'd get another LG.

Oh, the irony...

[gowen]

please check your bandwidth first to see if it can survive the Slashdot effect [bnl.gov],

Slashdot effect eh? I wonder what that is:

TCP connection to 'ssadler.phy.bnl.gov' failed: Connection refused.

I guess I'll never know.

Re:Oh, the irony...

[Reece400]

lmao :)!! good point :) Reece,

You are buying a CD burner because ?????

[mustangdavis]

Why would you waste your money buying a new 40x CD burner (unless your old burner dies and you have money to burn)?? If you have money to burn and are only after bragging rights, buy a DVD-R! Obviously, CD-Rs are not going to be around too much longer since they will be replaced by DVD-Rs (or holographical hard drives .... another completely different topic).

Save yourself $100 - $150 and buy a 16x burner if you MUST replace your CD burner, otherwise spend your money on what is going to be around for the next several years ... DVD-Rs.

Let's see (wondering through Best Buy) ... 16x CD burner = $89, ... 40x CD burner = $250, ... DVD burner = $400 ...

I'll pass on the over priced CD burner ... gaining 3 minutes per burn for something I'll only be using for another year just isn't worth $150 to me! .... and I love to have bragging rights ....

My 2 cents ...

Re:You are buying a CD burner because ?????

[GigsVT]

Save yourself $100 - $150 and buy a 16x burner if you MUST replace your CD burner,

You must not have kept up on burner prices. A 40X burner is going to cost around $75, a 16X burner will cost around $50 if you can still find someone selling one. Burner prices fell through the floor a couple months ago.

Re:You are buying a CD burner because ?????

[Paladin128]

• "Let's see (wondering through Best Buy) ... 16x CD burner = $89, ... 40x CD burner = $250, ... DVD burner = $400 ..."

Ummm... Best Buy has lousy prices, dude. You can get a Teac 40X for $90 online, or a Lite-on 40X for around $60. I just ordered a Teac 40X the other day from NewEgg for $86, and am expecting it in the mail real soon now.

Re:You are buying a CD burner because ?????

[Lumpy]

CDR-s are going to be around for at least another 5 years. probably longer. they are a wecomed and standard that everyone is comfortable with. PLus, CDR is cheaper than floppy to use $0.14 per disc in the US for 20X unbranded/no label media.. (from Compusa almost every time I walk in there and look at the bottom shelf) Compared to the cheapest DVD-R media at $3.95 per disc in a spindle of 25 (I have yet to see anyone carry a 100disc spindle)

Plus, DVD-R is still in it's infancy, everyone makes coasters once in a while (like CDR was in it's early days) and isnt reliable enough yet along with the moronic manufacturers having 900billion different standards.. (Morons, choose one that WORKS with set-top dvd players and trash everything else!)

CDR is probably going to outlive DVD-R if the industry keeps screwing around like it does.

Re:You are buying a CD burner because ?????

[Anonymous Coward]

Besides waiting to see if a single format emerges victorious in the DVD burning wars, there are other reasons to still hang on to CD burners. All of the DVD burners I have looked at will burn CDRs, but 8x is the max burn speed I have seen. When you want to burn audio cds, or data cds for others (or my work pc) that does not have a DVD-ROM you are back to 8x speed if you use a DVD-R/RW burner.

Re:You are buying a CD burner because ?????

[Anonymous Coward]

i have yet to produce a coaster on my dvdr

but the parent is forgetting the fact that many if not all dvd burners have CD writing also.

$1 a disc on 25 pack spindles.
$1.50 a disc for 10 pack DVD-RW.

off the internet, in stores you get screwed.

but i wouldnt have bought a dvd burner if it couldnt do cds also

Re:You are buying a CD burner because ?????

[Grapes4Buddha]

I just bought a TDK 40x burner for ~$90, and there was a $40 mail-in rebate. Total cost =~ $50.

So there!

Re:You are buying a CD burner because ?????

[mustangdavis]

This post was meant for Joe Average Computer Part guy .... not Sam the super dorkey nerd that has taped glasses that scowers the Internet to save a quarter on an item (then overnights it and pays $45 for shipping).... and it was based on retail prices BEFORE rebates :)

Re:You are buying a CD burner because ?????

[Paladin128]

Joe Average Computer Guy doesn't read Slashdot. I'd bet better than 80% of the Slashdot crowd is aware of NewEgg and Pricewatch.

Note to other posters

[Q Who]

If you place a link in a comment that you write, please check that the server is alive first, or at least click on the links in the comment preview.

Are you a Top Hacker?

More differences to drives than just 40X rating

[satsuke]

I have the 40X liteon (Cendyne OEM'd box) drive for around $70 last month. It replaced a Verbatim 32X drive I got the month before (took back to get faster drive at same price>

While there is only a comparitively small increase in speed the actual usable speed was more than a minute better. The Verbatim drive took much longer to close the session out and waited till later in the burn to switch up to it's highest speed.

As far as the argument that faster speeds are bragging rights only .. I beg to differ. I follow the alt.binaries.multimedia.anime and alt.binaries.anime groups on Usenet and 1.5 - 2 gigs per day of downloads are not uncommon. While this only works out to maybe 3 disks per day I don't religiously burn everything I have every night. Things like wanting to burn only episodes of the same show on a disk or simple lazyness do matter.

I sometimes queue up 35 gig or more of stuff to burn .. and at 2:30 per disk vs 3:00 - 3:30 per disk. It makes a big difference.

Someone may comment that I just need to get a DVD drive. That's the next step, for right now a 40x burner and $0.10 per CD or lower is more cost effective than $270 (with shipping and such) for a DVD burner and ~$2.00 per DVD.

It's like raayayain...

[Anonymous Coward]

on your wedding day.

Re:It's like raayayain...

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe that was her intention.

Re:It's like raayayain...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ironic, really, isn't it? ;)

Re:It's like raayayain...

[Anonymous Coward]

... dontcha think?

Re:It's like raayayain...

[Anonymous Coward]

How ironic.

Media cost?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since faster certified media tends to cost more, would the extra costs in materials be greater than the amount saved with a lesser burning time?

Re:Media cost?

[killmenow]

I don't know. We tend to use Mitsui Gold CD-Rs which are only available up to 24x right now, but will soon be available up to 48x certified. We'll be using the best available media regardless of whether we're burning at 1x or 40x.

40x 50x .. quo vadis ?

[anarhs]

Don't CD-RWs or DVD-RWs sucks anyway even if they will burn at 100x ? They are standard equipment now almost the only option to give somebody a large file on a medium.

They are not as "easy to use",IMHO.
Copy, erase,move in a snap with a usual HDD or even diskette. Compare it to CD-RW erase,make and burn cycle.
Even so called packet writing have not helped much.
It is not *difficult* to me.
It is *annoying*.
It is routine.
I hate routine.
Importing sessions, blanking,writing.
Every day, few times a day,every file i get.
I would like to spend my life more on thinking or coding , drinking beer whatever not mastering CDs.

More than 10 years most of people waits for a fast and high capacity standart random access rewriteable medium for PCs (MACs SUNs whatever).

Yet today we could see that brand new PCs are still equipped with a little and cute 1.44 MB floppy disk. ( sheesh only 2 times of modern CPU cache ).

Is there any hope left ?
What do you think about this ?
Will manufacturers negotiate about single standard someday ?
Can we ( together ) do something to make this happen ?

P.S. remember good old days when you could bring everyhing with you in a few floppies :)

GL
burners must burn

Re:40x 50x .. quo vadis ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Woow
2 choice for you :
- Bite in a piece of wood
or
- Take a rope and go hang yourself

Re:40x 50x .. quo vadis ?

[GigsVT]

USB or firewire hard disks seem to be the best price/size compromise currently for large file exchange. That, or network.

Re:40x 50x .. quo vadis ?

[jav1231]

I agree. I get into a rant all the time with Khoasx about this shit. The floppy is genius compared to a CD or DVD. The ultimate win for me was when I challenged him to insert a blank cd, mount /mnt/cdrom and then cp /home/moi/myfile.zip /mnt/cdrom. Can't do it? Can with a floppy! We need a bootable, writeable, viable medium that brings high capacity and ease of use. CD/DVD's are definitely NOT it. >

Re:40x 50x .. quo vadis ?

[doppleganger871]

UDF packet writing with mt. ranier drive (like a lite on 40x) works rather well. It acts just like a large zip drive, but faster... 10/12x RW writing is pretty quick.

Re:40x 50x .. quo vadis ?

[aivic]

I have more confidence with my data on an optical disc rather than a magnetic oriented platter.

You wouldnt believe how many times my data was lost or got corrupted on an LS-120 Disk, 1.44 Floppy Disk and everyone knows the mishaps of hard drive failure.

Yes magnetic storage is more convenient and efficient but theres a trade off with data integrity.

I guess it comes down to personal preference.

Aleks

Re:40x 50x .. quo vadis ?

[greed]

But what's cute is with my USB Compact Flash reader it shows up as a SCSI drive, mount cp & umount. Even easier on Mac and Windows--great way to transfer big files. And if you don't need to use the card in your camera, you could even partition it however you want and have different kinds of filesystems.

Single-track spiral media is just dumb for computer data. But we're stuck with it, it seems.

Re:40x 50x .. quo vadis ?

[Kintanon]

What about something like Flash or similar formats?
I've fallen in love with those tiny keychain devices that you plug into USB ports and they act as little HDs... Just great for carrying stuff around.

Kintanon

Speed Kills

[locarecords.com]

Faster is not necessarily better.

We prevent drives writing faster than 8x because we have found the disks cause problems further down the line when sent as demos (unplayable) or to CD pressing plants where there are errors found on the disks.

Re:Speed Kills

[mrscorpio]

You are not working with quality drives then. Try a Plextor, TDK, or Yamaha (my personal favorite).

Chris

Re:Speed Kills

[whereiswaldo]

I've burned ~80 discs with my Cendyne 40x with not a single problem. I use only 32x TDK discs now burned at 16x. The Nero software that came with the drive is great -- love the auto-verify after burning feature. Never a verify error! Oh yeah, I avoid Memorex discs like the plague. YMMV.

Time to Upgrade

[javacowboy]

I guess it's time to replace my crappy HP 2X CD-Writer...

HP's absence in all of this

[CmdrWass]

I have 3 HP CD burners (4x usb, 12x int, 16x int) and I think they are great. What gets me is that HP stopped distributing CD burners in favor of their new DVD burners. I wish they had a 40x cd burner available. Guess I'll just have to save up for an HP DVD burner.

Re:HP's absence in all of this

[DeadSeaTrolls]

Why do you even care? HP is just badging drives made by someone else.

Their DVD burners are make by Ricoh. Practically all the +R/+RW writers out there are made by Ricoh, and sold by Aopen, Philips, Sony, Memorex, Verbatim etc.

If you pay a premium for this OEM drive just because it has a certain name on it you are foolish.

On the -R/-RW side the drives are practically all made by Pioneer.

Re:HP's absence in all of this

[doppleganger871]

Personally, I can't stand Ricoh drives. The last two we had at work burned out in about 18 months.

I've had two Plextors 12x and 16x. Worked fine. My current drives are 24x and 40x Lite-On's. The 40x is upgradable to 48x with a firmware flash. My brother flashed his, works fine.

Never had any problems with Lite-On or Plextor burners... But, you can get 2 or 3 lite-ons for the price of a plextor... so even if the plextor will outlast the lite-on by 2:1, who cares? Lite-on seems to have better signal amplification features.

Re:HP's absence in all of this

[killmenow]

I have an HP made by Samsung

Re:HP's absence in all of this

[DeadSeaTrolls]

A DVD burner or CD burner? The HP 100/200i drives are Ricoh's. Mitsumi made at least some of HP's CD burners, I'm not sure who else, but I don't think HP made much of any of them in the last several years.

Re:HP's absence in all of this

[DeadSeaTrolls]

I can't say I've been impressed either, but their chipsets are in a lot of drives (CD-R/RW). Used their MP6200 and RW8040 drive. Always liked TEAC drives.

The LiteOn 40X performs very well, the TEAC 40X is also very solid. Plextor always seemed to cost too much, some people dig them, but I guess I don't care if it copys this or that protection scheme. I'll have to try the FW upgrade on the LiteOn to see how the 48X works, as I recall the LiteOn uses the MediaTek chipset.

Re:HP's absence in all of this

[Anonymous Coward]

Back when I had a 4X burner, it was a Ricoh 7040A. I used that for nearly 3 years. Churned out several hundred CDs, and had maybe 10 coasters at most in that entire time. It was a great drive for its day.

I sold it a few months back in perfect condition.

Re:HP's absence in all of this

[killmenow]

Sorry. CD-RW.

Re:HP's absence in all of this

[CmdrWass]

Notice that in my post I said "stopped distributing CD burners". In no way did I imply that HP actually manufactured my CD burners. And in fact, I knew that HP didn't manufacture my cd burners. BUT I didn't know who did, and rather than speculating about who manufactures my CD burner, and since I trust HP for my peripheral hardware needs (almost everything except the pc itself), I merely pointed out that they were not "Distributing" cdroms anymore. And you are absolutely right that I am paying a "premium for an OEM drive" BUT by paying that premium, I'm not foolish, rather I'm deferring my trust to HP to decide on a good OEM manufacturer for me. I don't know enough about CD-Burners (or at least I didn't when I bought mine) to know who a good manufacturer is. So before you start calling people "foolish" you need to evaluate the situation a little more. Not everyone knows as much as you THINK you know.

Re:HP's absence in all of this

[Yohahn]

Oh yeah...

And we shuold all buy what the grocery stores recommend, because they've evaluated for us.

Heck.. why bother looking at our stock portfolios and 401K's, obviously those financial people make good decisions.

What was wrong with those ENRON people anyway.

Come to think of it, you fit right with all the other brain dead consumers of the USA.

Re:HP's absence in all of this

[CmdrWass]

Thank you, you just proved my point to the other gentleman/gentlewoman that "So before you start calling people 'foolish' you need to evaluate the situation a little more". Again, you too have fallen to the mistake of making assumptions about me. It wasn't stated in my previous comment (and I'm sure you don't care beings that you too are ALL-KNOWING) that I have purchased and used HP hardware for over 10 years and have never had any problem with their hardware. Thus my trusting HP to provide me with the best products is something HP has earned from me, not some blind faith I'm placing in merely a company logo (the hp name). So I repeat... before you jump to your Infinite-Wisdom-based-conclusions, maybe you ought stop and consider all of the angles. And by the way, whether your ego will allow you to admit it or not, you too base decisions on trust. There are far too many things to worry about in this world to be able to not do so.

Re:HP's absence in all of this

[Yohahn]

Now you are making assumptions.

First off, I never claimed to be all knowing-- not sure where you got that idea. I'm just stating my opinions in opposition to yours.

Second. Have you ever tried flipping a coins 9 times and then perdicting the 10th outcome? Large corportations are so complex they might as well be entropy generators.

What I'm proposing is that the brand dosen't matter. Your LUCK in following a brand is meaningless, so why not follow the lowest cost?

"Brand" means something when you can tie a face to it. Otherwise, you might as well follow the lowest cost.

Who is HP anyway these days...
Are they Compaq?
Are they DIGITAL?
Are they Bruce Perns helping out Linux, or are they HP Lawyers threatening to use the DMCA to shutdown hackers?

Who is IBM? Who is Sun? Who is Microsoft?

If Linux users only go by brand, someday they will be branded. Be wary of the large corporations. Loyalty to them will get you no loyalty from them.

Re:HP's absence in all of this

[CmdrWass]

First off:

First off, I never claimed to be all knowing-- not sure where you got that idea. I'm just stating my opinions in opposition to yours.

Opinions generally take the form of "I think" or "It is of my opinion". It becomes more than just an opinion when you start making blanket claims, criticize, and use your opinions to "inform" others of their wrongness. I suppose the NAZI's didn't do anything wrong, since afterall, it was of their opinion that Jewish people were bad. Dumbass.

HP hasn't given me any reason not to trust them, and until they do, I'm saying that I don't have a problem paying a little extra for what seems to be more reliable hardware. Can you honestly tell me that HP printers are not the most reliable on the market?

Besides, based on your cynical point of view, by even purchasing hardware (as opposed to making it yourself), you are playing the hypocrit. Where do you think the parts that make up cd drives and other computer hardware come from? Even generic drives have Via, Motorola, IBM, or other big name chips and components in them. Using your verbage, "Who is Motorola".

You sound very much like the quintessential Linux user. You probably think that you are better than everyone else because you use linux. And yes, I AM making assumptions about you now, but your pisspoor arrogant attitude doesn't leave much for the imagination. Just speculating, but based on your frugality when purchasing hardware, my guess is that you are one of those OSS "users" that are just that: "users". You probably don't do anything in the way of contributing back to the community, do you? In fact, you are probably one of those guys that Pour talks about, "Damn it, why is this [ so or not like so ]?" ... Demanding that things be fixed in Linux as opposed to doing it yourself.

Re:HP's absence in all of this

[Yohahn]

Opinions abstractally are statements on how you see things. Just becuase I haven't used your catch phrases, dosen't make what I've said not an opinion.

I'm beginning to see your arguments as just a flame. You're using comparisons with NAZI's and using name calling.

As for buying and not making the hardware, it's true, you take a risk not making it yourself. This is why we have review sites. We look and see what the first risk takers have found. Do not confuse reviewers with companies that have found the thing that is the most profitable for them to sell. Who is Motorola indeed? Buy from the small guy you know, if you can. If you can't, try the reviews.

Also, simply stating you are making ssumptions, does not prove those assumptions right. Using your own logic, I could assume that you were a Linux user by YOUR own "piss poor arrogant attitude", but I'm going to instead assume nothing about you.

So not assuming, and based only on my observation of your comments, I'm going to reason you indeed are flaming and stop responding to you.

My last comment will simply be (my opinion) that you should resist "brand loyalty" the same way you should resist "falling in love" with a stock.

Good day sir.

Re:HP's absence in all of this

[CmdrWass]

"Come to think of it, you fit right with all the other brain dead consumers of the USA."

Ahh yes, now I remember where this thread started.

"I'm going to reason you indeed are flaming and stop responding to you."

If nothing else, maybe our little conversation will make you think a little bit next time YOU (that's right YOU) decide to post a negative criticism (flaming). I suppose it would have been far nobler to sit idly by while you attacked my character, but what fun would that have been?

"My last comment" ...

But, it looks like I gave you too little credit. You ARE, alas, smart enough to realize when you've been out debated (and out mudslinged).

Re:HP's absence in all of this

[DeadSeaTrolls]

Boy you guys have been busy.

This reminds me of an interesting signature I saw here once.

Arguing on the internet is like the special olympics...even if you win, you are still retarded.

You shouldn't take the description of "foolish" to hard, I didn't call you an "idiot", "moron" or "fuckwit". I merely think you've bought in to this brand loyalty thing a little too far.

I still believe you are foolish to let HP make the supplier choices for you. My observation (and thus my opinion) is that HP is buying CD/DVD burners from the lowest cost supplier in order to get the highest margin. The reason they stopped selling/distributing/giving-away CD Burners is because the margin evaporated to the Cendyne/HiVal/IoMagic's. The German burner problems may have had an effect, but I think thats a purely European thing. The reason they had the margin before was that people like you (didn't say you) wouldn't buy drives from Samsung or Mitsumi because they were cheap crap, but eagerly pay HP twice as much for the same thing. If you have to save up money for things it behooves you, and gives you the time, to do some research. The internet makes this much easier because so many of the tech sites and forums directly discuss who makes the underlying mechanisums. Paying HP a $200-300 premium for a DVD burner is just not smart for anyone other than HP, the're hosing you, open your eyes.

HP makes good laser printers, but there inkjets aren't that good. Sure they've made a few turkeys, but usually when the're cutting corners to get the sub $300 products out the door.

Re:HP's absence in all of this

[Yohahn]

Exactally.

Re:HP's absence in all of this

[CmdrWass]

Why can't you just say:

"I don't believe in brand loyalty, and here's why..."

In no way have any of your comments nullified my point of view. Reguardless of my feelings toward brand loyalty and HP, you are still missing the bigger point: You can have an opinion without belittling other people.

Arguing on the internet is like the special olympics...even if you win, you are still retarded.

Not only is this a rude and unbelievably insensitive thing to say, but it is somewhat ironic. I have a cousin who DOES compete in the special olympics. You've just proven that even he is smarter than you. In the 23 years that he's been alive, I have NEVER heard him once belittle anyone else based on his opinion, nor for any other reason.

Re:HP's absence in all of this

[CmdrWass]

Let us have a little lesson in irony, shall we?

You: Christian Libertarian. Not exactly sure what that means, but the Christian part implies the belief of Jesus Christ as "our" savior.

Me: Agnost. Question the existence of god.

You: Judgemental.

Me: Being persecuted for my beliefs. Ok, admittedly persecuted is a pretty strong word here, but as history has taught us, being judged can lead to only one thing... yup, you guessed it, persecution.

You: Believe in the words of the bible? Ever read the passage "Judge not lest ye be judged yourself"?

Me: Even in absence of faith and religion, I still try to keep my emotions separate from my opinions. I try to be fair and treat people with respect. Though I am human, so mistakes are made (nobody's perfect). Although, I do believe in "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth", you be disrespectful of my opinion, and I yours.

Re:HP's absence in all of this

[Yohahn]

You have gone completely off topic.
If you wish to continue this direction, please e-mail, otherwise.. you shuold really end this (dead end) thread.

Re:HP's absence in all of this

[DeadSeaTrolls]

Because that's not how I think! You have a valid point of view, and I'm under no illusion that discussions require that things get resolved one way or another. But I don't have to resort to bring crucifixtion or gasing ethnic groups to make my point. You nor I have even come close having "persecution" like that heaped upon us personally.

Yes, the special olympics quote is offensive, I'm not sure I suggested otherwise, and it's a quote from someone else. And you are missing the irony, because clearly I think I'm retarded for arguing with you. Perhaps it's autism, I will never be able to view the world from your own unique perspective.

This is very true

[BlackMesaResearchFac]

This is something I researched before I bought my 40/12/40 Plextor a month or so ago (although with this megahertz myth going around, I should lie and sue CDR makers for the meager difference between 32x & 40x).

In my case I went from ~40 minutes down to less than 4. That's when you know things are worth upgrading!

Safedisc, etc. Results?

[Roached]

Speed of burners at this point in time is pretty much moot. What really differentiates them is their ability to reproduce copy protected titles. Where are those tests?

Re:Safedisc, etc. Results?

[Anonymous Coward]

LiteOns are cheap and are supported 100% by CloneCD, the best program to use for all your legal software backups. (You *ARE* talking about legal software backups, right?)

Dunno about copying copy-protected CDs on Linux - not that most copy-protected software (OK, *games*) works on Linux anyway.

IDE 2 SCSI converter

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.yamaha-it.de/england/products/CRW2200/2 200-3200scsi.htm

This may be helpfull /ScumBag

Any reviews rate the CDRW with Norton Ghost ??

[mgpeter]

The only reason I purchased the Plextor 40x CDR is because how the Plextor Drives perform with Norton Ghost. I routinely backup our workstations to CDR with Norton Ghost 7, and most CDR drives are painfully slow with this DOS program. I have even seen 32x and 40x CD Burners run at only 60 MB per MINUTE with ghost. Plextor burners are nearly as fast as the Hard Drive, running consistantly over 200MB per minute on 7200rpm Drives, and even faster on our SCSI based Servers.

Why don't reviewers benchmark this test, because it is a very common use of a CDR Drive.

Got a 40x..Update the firmware to go 48x

[cOdEgUru]

Dont exactly remember the link, but I read somewhere that you could effectively update the firmware to have LiteOn 40x run at 48x. I own a Lite On 40x12x48x and my previous one used to run only at 2x (otherwise the buffer errors would kick in). And it was a huge difference to jump from 40 mins to 3 mins.

I dont own a Plextor, but I would say on a cost to performance basis, LiteOn wins hand down. Never turned out a coaster in the last few hundred CDs.

Re:Got a 40x..Update the firmware to go 48x

[Reziac]

All the clone dealers around L.A. use LiteOn CDRWs. I've asked the ones I trust to give a straight answer about its quality -- and they all say it's a trouble-free drive. I'll probably try one next time, especially since they're certainly cheap enough. $70 for 48x!!

Tho I got the 24x Plextor I'm using now (and am very happy with) because tho it cost a bit more than the equivalent LiteOn, it also has a two year warranty. That's an extra year for it to fail in and be replaced. :)

Haven't been out in a while, have you?

[uptownguy]

Let's see (wondering through Best Buy) ... 16x CD burner = $89, ... 40x CD burner = $250, ... DVD burner = $400 ...

First off, its "wandering" not "wondering" ...

Secondly -- I just picked up a 40x burner at Best Buy LAST WEEK for $89 - $20 rebate = $69.

Thirdly -- you can sit on the bleeding edge and pay 6-10 times as much for something that you know will either

(a) Drop significantly in price in the next 6 months -2 years.

(b) Become obsolete (and worthless) in the next 6 months - 2 years.

I, however, will enjoy my non-alpha release that is cheaper, more stable, and has support/drivers on the web site, thank you very much!

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

To quote the Simpsons...

[gosand]

Naturally, when you talk about saving a minute or less when burning a CD, it reminds me of...

Moe: Heh heh, I got it used from the navy. You can flash-fry a buffalo in forty seconds.

Homer: Forty seconds? But I want it now!

Re:To quote the Simpsons...

[horati0]

or...

Gun Shop Owner: Sorry, the law requires a five-day waiting period. We've got to run a background check.

Homer: Five days? But I'm mad now!

I have heard good things about Plextor but...

[Kheldarstl]

I Have never owned one, I have had several CDRW's over the years, including a Yamaha SCSI 6/6/24 which lasted 4 years burning approx. 5-10 disks per week, That drive was a real workhorse. Recently I was at a vend-duh's open house and won an Acer 40x CDRW, I Havn't seen much about the Acer drives so I figured, "what the hell, It's free(as in beer)" Not a bad drive, I have had it for three months and burn on average 5-10 CD's per week, The speed is nice, alot faster then what I have previously had access to, I'm surprised that what I always considered a "low-end" hardware manufacture has produced a good quality high speed CDRW... I wish I could find a review of that drive just to see if other people have had as good of luck with the Acer as I have...

Just My $.02 worth

Keith

Lite-On

[mustangsal]

You can get the Lite-On 40x cd-rw for around $70. The cool part is on their website you can download a flash upgrade to make it a 48x burner. 48x cd-rw for $70 is a good deal

Re:Lite-On

[syntap]

Got it for $40 after rebates at Best Buy a few weeks ago.

Hrm... but the big question is...

[tlhIngan]

These new CD-RW drives are nice, but what I really want to know is can I use them to make a backup of my copy of NWN, WarCraft3, etc? Considering the damn copyrestrictions they place on them, with 90 day warranties for replacement (ha...). Especially considering if you have a "collector's edition" game with special CDs (e.g. Diablo 2, WarCraft 3, etc), if that CD gets damaged, the best you get is a replacement with a regular edition CD (hey, it's nice to have a goodlooking set!)).

A) No-CD cracks don't work because most games are beta-quality, and patches come out continually.
B) Unauthorized patches are bad if you want network play (I paid for the game, I want to play online!)
C) If my CD breaks, and I couldn't copy it, you bet I will look for a pirated copy. Sorry, but the price of today's games (add taxes and stuff, and it's over $100 Canadian!) mean I'll buy *ONE* copy. If it breaks, you're going to get roasted the next time one of your games comes out (I paid $100 for this shiny disc I can't use anymore?).
D) A disposable CD-R backup is excellent when you go to LAN parties as well as to friend's houses. Never worry about losing a game somewhere.

(And it isn't a piracy issue. If I pirated the games, all I'd do is burn the damn ISOs onto CDs, copy them to my hard disk, and use a CD emulator like Daemon Tools (great for mounting Linux ISOs on Windows). I'd just need any damn CD-RW drive that can write a ISO9660 filesystem!)

Ah, furgitaboutit. I'll just use CloneCD to dump the CDs to ISOs.

Re:Hrm... but the big question is...

[Espectr0]

>and use a CD emulator like Daemon Tools (great >for mounting Linux ISOs on Windows).

What the heck are you talking about? Using daemon tools on windows to mount linux isos? Are you out of your mind?

Most distros if not all come with the iso filesystem built in into the kernel.

You can mount an iso with plain old mount!

man mount is in the order... Read it! Stop doing such an atrocity

Re:Hrm... but the big question is...

[_UnderTow_]

The short answer is: yes you can.

I've got a six year old boy at home, he's not terribly gentle with CD's yet (he is learning tho). I use a program called bindwrite to make perfect 1:1 copies of the games that I legally purchase. I then place the original up in the closet. I've made working copies of Diablo II, Dungeon Siege and NWN with this program. I've used the copy of Diablo II to connect to battle.net with no problems. You just need a CDRW drive capable of writing sub-channel data, I've been using a plextor 40/12/40 drive.

Re:Hrm... but the big question is...

[toby360]

You should really check out this site. Copy protection is easily averted using many of the utilties linked from this site. I myself use plextor drives and -never- have bad burns (referring to another post), often people mistake their "bad burns" with buffer underruns where your system can't keep up with sending data to your CDR. Plextor has burn protection which allows the CDR to slow down giving your system time to send it more data. In the past people just turned down the CDR burn speed and it works, so now they think that "lower burning speeds = "higher quality burns" which is absolutly not the case, it's merly increasing the frequency of successful burns because your system can finally keep up with the burner.


People shouldn't knock on a product if they don't know the brandname. Plextor's drives are top notch, the price premium over other drives is definatly worth it.

Re:Hrm... but the big question is...

[jafuser]

This makes me wonder.

Ever since mp3's have been out, I have practically stopped using CDs altogether. I still purchase a CD which contains music that I enjoy, to support the music.

However, I don't open these CDs, but instead I just put them in my cd-rack and let them collect dust. Recently, I've been a lot less interested in a particular genre of music, so I've begun to sell these unopened CDs, and delete the corresponding music to make it all clean.

So now, I'm selling "Brand New" CD's at very close to their original price, even though the "license" of my listneing to the music is "used".

Sort of weird. It almost feels like cheating, as I legally enjoyed the privledges of listening to the music for free. :) Although, I'm sure the RIAA would consider this whole thing stealing...

Now I imagine the same can be done with computer games. I can buy the "box" at the store, leave it sealed, stick it on my bookshelf, download the game off the net, play it for a week or two, and when I'm done, I sell the game as brand new and unopened on half.com or ebay or whatever...

Anyone care to share their thoughts on the legality/morality/*lity of this?

Re:Hrm... but the big question is...

[Lagged2Death]

Over at cdrinfo.com, they often do some copy-protection testing and analysis when they review a new burner. Sometimes both for CD-R and audio CD copy-protection systems, even.

Re:Hrm... but the big question is...

[geekoid]

I have 2 beautifull children ages 4 and 2. They will on ocasion render a CD that there dear old pop(me) leaves within their reach, or they get hol of one of there games, and render it usless.(once jelly gets in the pits and dries, it isn't coming out). I have found most companies will send you a replaement, if you send them the disk.
Some charge some do not.

normally I tell them That I won't pay, they need to send it on there dime, or I'll just won't buy there products. Only a few have refused to bunge.

Re:Hrm... but the big question is...

[peccary]

it's legal *and* moral.

"new" applies to the media, not the license, and indicates that the media has no scratches or defects.

there's no such thing as a "used" license, the concept is meaningless.

64x is as fast as it gets (1/2 the speed of sound)

[sh0rtie]

This Page [google cache] tested CD Roms to destruction and concluded the fastest a CD rom could spin at without self-destructing was 64x to quote

"A 64x drive using CLV would have to rotate the disc with 33,920 rpm when reading an inner track, exposing the hub of the disk to a tangential force of some 45 N/mm2. A point on the periphery of the disc will be moving with 213 metres per second, slightly more than half the speed of sound. Can the disc take that?
The answer is no. A powerful no.

At about 52x, i.e. 27,500 rpm, most manufacturer's CDs blew up in a rain of plastic particles, leaving their marks on the premises. The result was a pile of shimmering plastic chips."

seems a bit silly/iresponsible to even get close to those speeds if storing data reliably is an issue (especially using 20c media), sure the drive might reach those speeds but will the media ?, has this drive got something special to prevent destruction (multiple heads etc) or is it just using brute force ?

40x? Piffle!

[richie2000]

A 48x Plextor CD-RW has been announced:

• Although the maximum reading speed of the drive is 48x, it will be factory set at 40x and includes a SpeedRead function that enables users to select the higher speed.
  Patrick Peeters explains: "The reason we use this unique approach is to provide flexibility to customers: for the vast majority 40x is the ideal mix of speed/quality, but there are a small number that will require 48x. However, the increase in speed from 40x to 48x can increase the noise for any drive in the market. In extreme circumstances using high-speed reading, where the CD is severely scratched, it can explode in any drive and even cause injuries to the user. We have redesigned the PlexWriter 48/24/48A drive to strengthen the front bezel to prevent any injuries. To our knowledge, we are the only manufacturer in the market to have implemented this safety feature."

Oh, the burnmanity!

Service Temporarily Unavailable

[fire-eyes]

Service Temporarily Unavailable
The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later.

Look for google caches before submitting people. This would be a good tip to have on the submission page.

I have that plextor

[fire-eyes]

And man is it cool. I haven't found any 40x media in local stores yet (i'd rather not order on line), but I have found 32x and the drive really does burn onto it at 32x. ~2 minutes for a full cd. Fantastic!

Re:Angry NetOps (Was Re:Note to other submitters)

[Anonymous Coward]

The URL http://www.techwarelabs.com/reviews/storage_memory /40x_burner_roundup/
has been limited to 1Mbps. So all is well :)

- havoc

RPM I'll never use

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice that things can go that fast. However, if you're going to use CD-R that don't suck (Kodak and Mitsui), you won't go past 24x.

Mike Nomad

Re:Britain has the worst teeth

[Anonymous Coward]

The only two criticisms so far have been the hoary old "teeth" myth. Clue: I've been to the U.S and your dentisty is nothing special, unless you happen to be on TV and need (and can afford) thousands of dollars worth of work.

Re: /.'ed

[slickwillie]

Since I can't read the story, I'll ask here. I just returned an OptoRite 40x12x40 drive. It had the following problems: hung when reading a CD for duplicating (back off RIAA - it was a Linux disk); hung when writing a CD-RW; and would get a media error about 500MB into writing a CD-R. Does anyone know if this sounds like a bad drive, or is there some Linux (Mandrake 8.2) incompatibility? It said it would work with Linux on the box.

Also, is OptoRite the same as the Lite-On? I see alot of $40 40x12x40's and they all seem to be OEM'ed from the same place.

CD-R Media...

[MsGeek]

Taiyo Yuden, baby. The real stuff is available at Americal.Com or you can get TYs badged as Fuji just about everywhere. Great stuff. Won't last as long as Mitsumi Gold but is close.

Re:CD-R Media...

[DeadSeaTrolls]

Target was selling some NEW 40X Memorex this Sunday (25-Aug-2002) which was Taiyo Yuden DX media, 100 disc spindle for $19.77. The spindle was plastic wrapped and the discs had a frosted center hub. Marked "Made in Japan". This is NOT the same stuff that they were selling from CMC Magnetic previously. LiteOn reckons this media is good to 48X.

The ATIP code is 97"24'01, 79"59'72 which is Taiyo Yuden, DX Dye.

Worked flawlessly in the Mitsumi, LiteOn and NEC 40X drives.

Death of SCSI CDR?

[TibbonZero]

What happened to SCSI CD-Rs?
They have all seemed to die. The best ones were Plextor ones, but now plextor just seems to make IDE drives. I am a SCSI advocate, and really would rather not have IDE stuff in my system. I know that my SCSI harddrives could keep up with a SCSI CD-R, and probably still let me play quake 3 at the same time, without fear of underrun.
Anyone know any SCSI CD-R manufacturers?

Re:Death of SCSI CDR?

[gjt]

Doesn't Yamaha make SCSI CDRs? You might also want to consider FireWire CDRs.

Re:Death of SCSI CDR?

[slaker]

Sanyo and Yamaha still make SCSI CD-RW units. Yamaha's are actually ATAPI drives with a SCSI converter. Anyone else who sells a SCSI unit at this point bought it from Sanyo.

I swore by Yamaha SCSI drives until I realized that a Lite-On 32x12x48x ATAPI unit PLUS an ACard IDE to SCSI converter is still cheaper.

So I bought several of those, and now I don't care when my optical drives break.

Re:Death of SCSI CDR?

[BestNicksRTaken]

Yeah, I used to be a SCSI CDR only person, now I still have a Yamaha 6416S in the Linux box, but SCSI has got so far behind in terms of CD-RW's, I think the fastest is 24x. I have a CyberDrive 36x1248 IDE in my Windows box and it burns a CD in aa couple of minutes and is burn proof, so I don't need to worry about the IDE bus anyway. FireWire is the way to go next I think, SCSI is dying off.

Re:Death of SCSI CDR?

[shepd]

>Yamaha's are actually ATAPI drives with a SCSI converter.

Hooboy, that's wrong (not as in facts, but as in a way of doing something) in so many ways I'm not sure where to start.

I mean, lets see, we're taking a SCSI commandset, stuffing it into IDE, then stripping the IDE stuff off again so we just have SCSI.

Its like connecting male and female gender benders together. Pointless fun!

Re:Death of SCSI CDR?

[Anonymous Coward]

But Linux has no firewire support.

Re:Death of SCSI CDR?

[Iffy Bonzoolie]

This sucks... I'm still living with a 18Gig drive because I'm 100% SCSI. I remember like 6-7 years ago (or was it longer?) when I decided to move to all SCSI at great expense... before there was anything like ATA-66 or better. Of course, "at great expense" meant something different at the time, because I was in High School, and only had an allowance + birthday money.

Anyway, my SCSI drives are still pretty sweet, they are just very, very small in capacity. If I wanted to add an IDE drive, I could go down to Fry's and buy a 6.022 x 10^23 Gig drive for $20, but NOOOO I have be a SCSI snob. I really need that support for the 11 other SCSI devices, too... I actually have 1 8x burner, 1 40x CD rom, and THREE scsi hard drives. But, since I can't fit the third one in my case anyway, I'm not using it. Just in case, though, I have the option of adding 11 other devices. Yaaay!

Ahh, back in the day when I thought I'd get a SCSI scanner and laugh at those people with Parallel scanners. Nobody told me about USB, or FireWire, or digital cameras, for that matter.

Damn you Adaptec! Daaaaaaaammmmmmmnnnnnnnnnn yyyyyyooooooooooooooouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!!!!!!!!!!!!!

-If

Re:Death of SCSI CDR?

[Com2Kid]

I'd get a SCSI scanner and laugh at those people with Parallel scanners.

I have a SCSI scanner! Cheap off of ebay. :-D Weighs a ton, but the high ass DPI and such are uber sweet! :) (Non-interpolated of course, heh. 2400DPI native. :) )

Re:Death of SCSI CDR?

[robhancock]

With current IDE technology, there is really no point in making SCSI CD-RW drives - really, what would you gain to justify the extra cost? With DMA transfers, you can get CPU utilization in the low single-digit percentage range..

Re:Death of SCSI CDR?

[Jucius Maximus]

"I could go down to Fry's and buy a 6.022 x 10^23 Gig drive for $20, but NOOOO I have be a SCSI snob."

You might want to check your units there ...

And yes I know about the difficulties of switching from SCSI. I've got this top-of-the-line host adapter and ~8 SCSI HDD's (small ones) sitting around after I threw a 20G IDE in the machine and sold it.

Re:Death of SCSI CDR?

[Iffy Bonzoolie]

"I could go down to Fry's and buy a 6.022 x 10^23 Gig drive for $20, but NOOOO I have be a SCSI snob."

You might want to check your units there ...

Yeah, well... it was a bit of an exaggeration. :) Point is: IDE Hard drives are insanely cheap these days.

Pretty soon we will have some persistant storage with a Mole of bytes. Molar storage, it will be called. You will be able to go to a dentist, get a Molar removed, and then buy a Molar Disk to make yourself feel better. Better than local anesthetic, I bet.

-If

Re:Death of SCSI CDR?

[Jucius Maximus]

OMG ... it has been so long since I took chemistry that the molar quantity totally slipped by me and I did not recognise it. Shame one me! In high school I was the master of all that stuff.

Re:Death of SCSI CDR?

[TibbonZero]

But you can't have 14 devices in your system then... Only 4. Primary Master, primary slave, secondary master, 2ndary slave instead of 1-14 on two SCSI chains.
For the most part I understand though. But where is the 'extra' cost come into manufacturing SCSI devices? I thought it was just because they wanted them to cost more...
Plus, the highest level of SCSI does something like what 320mb/s? That still beats anything IDE, and SCSI drives have cool stuff at times like Hot Swap, and Raid-5. I know that doesn't really apply to CD-Rs, but I would rather just run SCSI in general

This is Soooooo 12 minutes ago

[mac123]

48/12/48 just announced:

http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/020821/210153_1.html

YORBA LINDA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 21, 2002--EZQuest began shipping its new Boa 48x12x48 USB 2.0 CD-RW drive today. Last month, EZQuest began shipping its FireWire version of this drive. The drives are priced at $189 for the USB drive and $199 for the FireWire drive. Together, these new drives are the fastest, highest-performance drives in the industry. Both drives can burn a 74-minute CD in 1.52 minutes (about 20% faster than 40x drives) and re-write a 74-minute CD in 6.1 minutes. Other features include their 48x read speed (the fastest available on a CD recorder), and their 2MB buffer size and buffer under-run technology (which eliminates under-run errors in fast-write modes). These high-speed drives are ideal for data archiving and desktop publishing, and for MIDI and recording studio applications.

Here's a link

[Crouching Turbo]

This site has an excerpt from the review.

Review of same drive at Designtechnica

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is our review for those interested. we reviewed the same exact drive and were pretty impressed with it.

Acer

[Anonymous Coward]

My Acer CD-RW is fine. Only a 2x, but I'm a patient person.

CD-R or DVD-R

[scharkalvin]

Almost all DVD-R(W) drives will burn CD-R(W)'s so you can have your cake and eat it too here (though dvd-r drives won't burn a cd as fast as some of the latest cd-r(w) drives do.) CD's will be replaced by dvd's eventually, but they will be around for quite a bit longer and dvd drives will always be able to read them so no need to to upgrade yet. The shootout between dvd-r(w) and dvd+r(w) isn't over yet, better wait until the winner is know before you end up with a bunch of useless disks. Maybe a dvd drive that will work with both flavors will come along and claim the title of standard. And even DVD will become obsolete as the new blue-ray drives and media become available. I'll sit dvd burners out until the media drops to about $1 a disk or less and the burners drop to the $100-150 price range.

Re:64x is as fast as it gets (1/2 the speed of sou

[unicron]

Someone, somewhere, is thinking very hard about how to turn his knowledge into a dangerous anti-piracy measure.

"Damn man, what happened to your arm?"

"Was trying to cd-to-cd copy some juarez and the damn CD exploded. My cat wasn't as lucky."

Re:64x is as fast as it gets (1/2 the speed of sou

[3ryon]

I believe the reason that a badly manufactored CD won't explode at 40X is because when a CD drive claims 40X speed they are talking about the speed of the outermost bits of the disk. While the test you refered to is talking about the hub. I don't know what the difference in speed is, but I'm sure it's very significant.

uh what?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Was trying to cd-to-cd copy some juarez...

Juarez? The city in Mexico? Don't you mean warez?

Re:64x is as fast as it gets (1/2 the speed of sou

[jhernand]

Presumably, 40X media is built accordingly to withstand the force applied by a 40X drive. If/when drive speeds reach 64X, we should hope that media manufacturers will offer compatible discs.

Re: /.'ed

[slaker]

OptoRite is distinctly NOT Lite-On. Lite-On OEM'd drives have a characteristic faceplate that the OptoRite doesn't share.

AFAIK, Cendyne and Buslink are both shipping Lite-On drives at the moment.

A friend of mine had similar problems with an Optorite unit.

HOAX

[Anonymous Coward]

Tha page is a bluff, its a aprils fool joke that have been translated to the webb.

Good or bad?

[920]

I don't know wether to jump for joy or be very afraid because now Britney Spears can reproduce faster than rabbits....

-----

Please note, this is humor, nothing else.

So will we see a cooler hack soon?

[gelfling]

Ummmm let's see at 64x the disk flies apart and kills everyone in the room just like a jet turbine failure. So let's say they lick that problem.....how soon before we see an alcohol/chlorine/halon/liquid nitrogen injection Pelltier effect cooled drive chassis unit.

Seriously if you need to save that much time just invest some dollars for a multi duping unit and burn 4 or 6 or 12 or 20 CDs at the same time.

True-X drives

[Espectr0]

What happened with the true-x drives? I lost one to a power surge, but they are off the market now. They used 4 lasers instead of one, so they were quiet and the fastest of the market (72x, and not MAX, they were REALLY 72x ALL the time)

Re:True-X drives

[hendridm]

I heard that many people had reliability issues. Kenwood appears to have discontinued theirs, even though it's the only product listed on their computer peripherals page. I think their webmaster needs to wake up!

Re:True-X drives

[hendridm]

It also appears than Zen, makers of the TrueX technology, are having financial problems and/or reorganization, although their web page is confusing and doesn't have any content.

Save the bitching already!

[Enonu]

Every single damn story about CDR burners has people bitching about the apparent worthlessness between the difference between 40X and 48X or even 24X and 48X. Well folks, this difference is real if you burn more than on CD (OMG!). Get over it!

007, you're mission is to burn 1000 CDs, you have to choices, buy a 40X burner for $45 or buy a 48X for $55 (Lite-on, pricewatch.com). What do you choose?

Damn easy choice isn't?

Re:Save the bitching already!

[geekoid]

which ever one has the highest degree of success

Re:Save the bitching already!

[peccary]

damned easy choice. Buy two 32X burners for $80, and get the job done in just a smidgen over half the time the 48X burner would take.

Re:Angry NetOps (Was Re:Note to other submitters)

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry about that havoc :(

I submit all the time and never get posted. Next time we will be prepared.

-keefe-

Correct EFM Encoding Is Key For New CDRWs

[meehawl]

Whatever about saving that precious extra 30 seconds or so during burning, I prefer to know that my burner can handle some of the more neferious copy protection schemes now coming to market.

Many of these are based on sending abnormally regular EFM subchannel data to the CDRW and relying on it to crap out. You can get details about the capabilities of current burners here, but this CloneCD list describes exactly which burners have the firmware "Correct EFM-Encoding" cojones to defeat the latest copy protection.

I'm glad to see that the "wallet-friendly Lite-On" drives seem to feature some of the the most consistent support for defeating EFM trickery.

Re:Correct EFM Encoding Is Key For New CDRWs

[tRoll with Butter]

Bah. I'm still using an old 2x CD-RW drive and it can't copy copyprotected CDs worth shit. I just head on over to gamecopyworld and get a crack. Since most of my games are stored as virtual mounted ISOs anyway, a crack is the *only* way to make it really work. Besides, do you *really* like hunting for the CD every time you load a game? Maybe it was necessary back in the days of floppies and small hard drives, but not anymore.

* Please note, I am not advocating the use of warez'd/pirated copies of games, I'm talking about applying a crack to a legally purchased game so I can use it on MY computer in a way I see fit.

My experience (Re:Frisbee/Coaster turn out)

[Webmoth]

I recently burned over 500 copies of CD's (Attn. RIAA: content is church services, so no copyright issues here). Equipment included a CD tower with 40x Lite-On drives, media was rated for that speed.

I had three coasters. That is a 99.4% success rate.

So the overall reliability at high speeds is good. You are probably more likely to have coasters when using a CD-R (even the same ones I have) in a computer where demands are made by other processes, hard drives are fragmented, and users are idoiots (j/k).

Article mirror

[eswierk]

Here's a temporary mirror of the article.

Heh, great error message, these guys are funny

[Magius_AR]

From the site:

ERROR 503 Because of the Slashdot effect we had to limit the bandwidth just a tad. Chances are, if you hit refresh the page will load. -keefe-

Magius_AR

Confused

[hendridm]

> At about 52x, i.e. 27,500 rpm, most manufacturer's CDs blew up in a rain of plastic particles

But what about all those 52x and higher CD-ROM drives out there?

Re:Confused

[robhancock]

The speeds they refer to in the testing are the actual rotational speed of the disc compared to the maximum speed in a 1X drive. A 52X-max CD reader will not spin the disc faster than about 20X or 24X - the maximum reading speed is achieved only at the outside edge of the disc.

They may not want it to work in set-tops

[ColGraff]

If the format works in Set-tops, that raises the scarey specter of piracy.

Re:They may not want it to work in set-tops

[Lumpy]

WEll their loss.

If they want to eridacate the VCR they have to give us a way of putting home video on the set. and making a DVD in my home is the only way.

Right now I master VCD's and SVCD's bot of which are dodgy at best in playing.. VCD is very very low res with lots of artifacts, and very few DVD players that say they will play a SVCD will actually play a SVCD.. (I have tried EVERY player sold at BestBuy.. only 3 of 20 that said SVCD on the face actually played it.... them odds aren't worth crap.)

Manufacturers need to flip the collective bird to the content people... Just like how they did it with CDR... and make something that actually works.

24x10x40 SCSI from Sanyo

[hendridm]

> and get a much slower drive (12/10/32 vs 40/12/40 or 40/12/52).

Sanyo has a 24x/10x/40x SCSI CD-RW drive available, but they're not as cheap as their IDE cousins of course. Maybe it will pay for itself in fewer frisbees and frustration?

Re:24x10x40 SCSI from Sanyo

[Zathrus]

Modern IDE CD-RW's don't make frisbees. Even under heavy CPU load the various techs like Smart-Burn and ExacLink prevent buffer underruns.

If you make a frisbee nowadays it's because either the media was bad or you tried to burn at too high a speed for the media. That's about it.

Yes, I used to be a SCSI head. Then I got over it, took a look at modern IDE devices, and realized just how much a waste of money it is for the consumer.

Re:24x10x40 SCSI from Sanyo

[hendridm]

> Even under heavy CPU load the various techs like Smart-Burn and ExacLink prevent buffer underruns.

Perhaps I'm just unlucky, but I've made PLENTY of frisbees with IDE CDRW's with this technology, and I generally try not to do much while I'l burning. I probably lose about one-third of my discs that I try to burn in my Plextor 12x (IDE) and my Elements 24x (IDE) burner - both have Buffer Underrun protection. I don't seem to have any better luck with Nero than I do with Easy CD Creator either. And, yes, I only burn at speeds that the CDRs are certified for.

Re:64x is as fast as it gets (1/2 the speed of sou

[Tower]

Ah, but what about reading older CD-ROMs at 64x+? Would they blow apart just reading the TOC?

Re: /.'ed

[Simonetta]

I have had a lot of problems with the CD recorders that I have bought in the past two years. Here's a brief history:

Mitsumi - 4x2x8x - May 2000 $165
failed after 7 months usage, about 20 disks.
gradually could not read or write data correctly - no error messages
couldn't contact tech support for RMA

BTC 8x4x24x Dec 2000 $120
-failed after 6 months usage, about 30 disks.
-gave the same stange error message with every attempt to access a CD.
-returned for RMA. Received replacement that is
beginning to fail after 9 months.

QPS Que (Ultima Technologies) 24x10x40x $90
-failed after 6 months usage, about 50 disks.
-no drive letter assigned by Windows. Tried several PC's with same results.
-could not contact Que tech support; sent five e-mails (none answered). Telephone call placed on hold for 45 minutes (my toll charge) with no reply.

Artec 32x12x48x (Ultima Technologies) $60
-still working after one month use, about 20 disks.

What is wrong with this industry???? I really like this technology but I dread having to throw more and more money into these defective products!

Has anyone else had these kinds of experiences?

These reviews are real crap !

[MartijnH]

I think this review is really not worth a cent, at least it doesn't give you a good view on the drives, because the tests are to short and too less. If you want extensive, quality CD-RW reviews, that clearly explain what is important and that tests all features, there is only one site CD Freaks.com ! Check out their reviews here: Lite-On 40x Plextor 40x Teac 40x Intresting note to add that most of the times when discussing high speed CD-RW drives people are going to talk about the speeds and exploding CDs etc. You should know that there is a difference between reading and writing discs. Writing at high speeds is not really a problem because you are mainly using new CD-Rs you get out of plastic or whatever, there is no label on it, or an other print, in other words the CDs is stable and not likely to be damaged. If you are reading a CD you read CDs with label, damaged plastic, dust, and other stuff that make the CD unstable, and if you have the slighest scratch in the plastic the CD might even break in pieces at high speed ! So to conclude: 40x, 48x, 52x, 56x writing is not a problem, above 40x reading is unsafe !

Re:64x is as fast as it gets (1/2 the speed of sou

[Tomster]

Sounds like there's a burgeoning market opportunity for high-strength CDs. I predict them to appear within the next year, as 72x and 84x drives become possible.

Only half-joking....

Re: /.'ed

[slickwillie]

I bought a Sony drive about 4 years ago that stopped working after about 10-20 disks. If I remember correctly it could read it's own writing, but other drives couldn't, so maybe it some kind of alignment problem. Replaced it with an HP 8x4x24 that is still going.

You're wrong, the IDE bus is not the bottleneck

[Tuxinatorium]

ATA-33 supports 33mb/sec. That's equivalent to burning a 700mb CDR in 21 seconds. That's 228x speed. The IDE bus is NOT the bottleneck. :)

Besides, they could start using ATA66 or ATA100 if ATA33 wasn't fast enough.

Re:You're wrong, the IDE bus is not the bottleneck

[Antity]

You forgot to include lead-in/-out in your calculations.

WTF?

[jfdawes]

Excuse me? You're slashdotted, so you're going to send me a page full of image button navigation links, javascript, animations and advertising?
What about a text only summary? A table of results? Maybe even a cheesy two colour graph? I really only want to see which one has the best blend of reliability and speed.

Re: /.'ed

[Reece400]

lol! think that's bad?? my lite-on 16x can burn fine, and read normal cd's fine,, but it can't read burnt CD or RWs,, not even the ones it writes!! now is that bizzare or what! my burner before that was an HP 4x,, after a year, it's laser over heated, melting it's self, and the disc in the drive (not badly, but definatly noticably,) Reece,

Sanyo

[Anonymous Coward]

Sanyo does SCSI CD-RW at decent speeds. See the God box at Ars Technica for details.

Yamaha F1

[belroth]

I just got one of these, 44x24x44 nice.
The writing is full CAV too with 8Mb cache. And Mt Ranier support, which is just wonderful, for those that don't know this means you just put in a blank CDR/CDRW and start packet writing to it - the formatting is done in the background so no annoying wait before the disc is usable.
I'm not too sure about the Disc T@2 feature, I suppose it's nice putting graphics round the edge of a CDR but I tend to fill them up.

Err, it wasn't a reason for me to get it but somebody might care that the LED is blue/purple. Oh and my previous fastest CDRW is a 12x10x32 so this is a useful increment.

Because they cost just about $50, silly.

[Anonymous Coward]

40x12x48 CD Recorders EIDE/ATAPI
5.25-inch FireWire Enclosure
And the case, if you must have it stand alone, is only about $60.

TrueX a workaround?

[naloxone]

Well, I assume the technique had some problems (Zen Research seems to be down for the count) and would have to be adjusted to work with CD-R, but isn't the idea behind TrueX (which Kenwood used for quite a while) a potential work-around now that noise and safety are becoming issues?

They used a diffraction grating to split the beam and read mutliple points on the disc at the same time. That freed them up to spin the disc slower to reduce noise and jitter. It also meant they could read at a consistent speed across the entire surface of the disc. Not to mention greatly reduced spin-up times.

This wouldn't work as-is for burning CDs because you're turning on and off the laser, which would mean all the "split" beams would have to be writing the same thing. But how hard would it be to put in a second laser, spin the disc at 32X and get 64X burning with less noise and no safety issues? Anyone know why TrueX failed and if / how it could be adapted to CD-R?

Yes and Traxdata/Lite-On has a 52x burner

[MartijnH]

Read here

Re: /.'ed

[helixcode123]

Since I can't read the story, I'll ask here. I just returned an OptoRite 40x12x40 drive. It had the following problems: hung when reading a CD for duplicating (back off RIAA - it was a Linux disk); hung when writing a CD-RW; and would get a media error about 500MB into writing a CD-R. Does anyone know if this sounds like a bad drive, or is there some Linux (Mandrake 8.2) incompatibility? It said it would work with Linux on the box.

I had a similar problem involving large files that ended up being a security issue (max allowable file size). Have you noticed similar problems, say, downloading ISO's larger than 500 Mb? Check your files in /etc/security.

404??

[fred911]

This page is temporarily unavailable.

The reason for this is we had to limit the bandwidth for this article at ~1.0 MBPS because we were liked at Slashdot.

This page will automatically retry the article every 45 seconds.

Re:404??

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, even with the mod throttle we are still being slammed. Here is an active mirror of the review...

MIrror Here

Re: /.'ed

[zdzichu]

failed after 7 months usage, about 20 disks.

[...]
-failed after 6 months usage, about 30 disks.

[...]
-failed after 6 months usage, about 50 disks

[...]-still working after one month use, about 20 disks.



20, 30, 50 disks... daily? or weekly?
My Acer 8x4x32 burned about 150 disks monthly since july 2001. It's still working perfectly.
Do you put coffe mug on tray? How you managed to break drives so fast?

Re: /.'ed

[Jucius Maximus]

"Has anyone else had these kinds of experiences?"

Not with CD-R/w drives, no. The first one, purchased ~4 years ago was a Matsushita 4x CD-R SCSI drive and it still is going strong today! This drive has no buffer underrun prevention since it was not invented at the time of purchase, but still not a buffer underrun in ~3 years (150+ discs) on it. My Plextor 24x10x40 served me well for a few months until I sold it. (30+ discs on that one.) My new Plextor 40x12x40 has been going strong for about 6 months now with ~50 discs burned and no signs of problems.

I suggest you invest in a non-cheap drive (although the Mitsumi should've done you well.) Plextor. Teac. Toshiba. Philips. Yahama. Not Sony, they are annoying with silly software. Actually Lite-On seems to have a good reputation ... my brother has one but it's too new to say it has avoided infant mortality.

This is why I buy Plextor drives.

[Anonymous Coward]

My Plextor 12x4x32 SCSI CDRW is still running strong today, even after backing up my 80 gig drive to CD-Rs twice in 1 month.

Mind you, I pay $$ to get them, but they are worth the price in the long run.

I just wish they made SCSI versions Of their burners again. Alas.

Linux support?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't have a CD burner yet because I want to get one with excellent compatibility with Linux. Every time I read the CD burner boxes at Best Buy I see lots of assurances for Win 9x/ME/NT/2k/XP but few make any mention of anything else but Mac.

I actually bought an LG Electronics cd burner a few months back because it said "Slackware Linux supported" but the instructions seemed to state the assurance only applied to use as a CD reader. Discouraged I decided not to use it.

Any recommendations on brand/model for use with SUSE 8.x and/or Caldera? Would it make more sense to wait for DVD+R prices to come down?

Re:Linux support?

[Dave2 Wickham]

AFAIK, any CD writer will do. In RH 7 non-SCSI requires you to recompile the kernel, but since I only have one CD-RW drive (which works fine) don't quote me on this ;).

what rock are you people hiding under?!

[Anonymous Coward]

jesus, i've been buying tdk 48x riteks for at least 2 months now. hell, i grabbed 2 more spindles of 100 last week.

and if there's 48x media, then there's obviously 48x and higher drives.. :)

Re: /.'ed

[zonker]

i'd almost start to wonder if your power supply or something was giving out... just a guess. either that or you have extraordinarily bad luck.

Why not 48X CDRW roundup ?

[Taco Cowboy]

Even _slow_ manufacturer like Iomega already came up with 48-24-48 drive, methinks it's time for someone to do a 48X roundup.

TDK VeloCD

[samdu]

I've been a fan of the TDK VeloCDs for a while now (currently have a 32x10x40) and all the head to head reviews I've seen of late have put the current VeloCD ahead of the rest of the pack.

Re:64x is as fast as it gets (1/2 the speed of sou

[juhaz]

Most, if not all, new drives have got some sort of system that is monitoring quality of burn speed at the fly. If things are starting to look bad, it automatically drops recording speed to the level where there are no more problems.

Seems to work, too, I just got myself a nice 40x LG, and it does detect that part after 70 minutes of my that's write media just SUCKS and dropped the speed - result, perfectly readable cd at avg of about 29x (32x write). Oh, and that media is 16x or 12x rated.

("that's shite" I used to call them. When burned with the old 20x10x40 acer... well, anything over 8x would result in corrupt data)