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DVD Burner Round-up
Julio writes "Gone are the days of storage floppies and zip drives... CD-RW drives do an excellent job in making cheap backups and just about every new computer is equipped with one. As computers and software evolve, so will media. DVD burner drives are already optional equipment on many computers, and will probably become a standard within the next year. Are you ready for a DVD burner? TechSpot has posted a round-up of flagship DVD recorders from Plextor, Panasonic and Pioneer."
It's interesting to have that much backup space avail for a non-server computer. I got a Powerbook last December with the Super-drive and the only thing I can find to use it for is mostly cd-r. Dvd-r is nice to have, but I don't have much use for it. Maybe someone who d/l's movies or something can do it, but...
Otoh, for making movies and stuff, this is very useful via the whole iMovie (or PC equiv) thing. But where this would really come in handy is on a server of some sort where you have big amounts of data. But even then, you need to back up more than 4 or 5 gigs worth usually, so..
But for the end user, I guess it's nicer to have more than less. Who knows, I might start needing to back up more than 665MB soon..
Even better than the pen-sized piece of plastic is this sweet watch
Yeah- zip drives are pretty pointless as far as I can tell.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
I'm not sure how to say this without sounding like some Mac freak (which I am now :), but I've been doing DVD burning for years now.
:). The network and firewire is just faster. Plain and simple.
You've seen the chart (read the story), right? Yeah -- slow as heck it seems sometimes. The first time I really started using the burner it was on the Mac. Slow enough that I also got a Firewire card for one of the office PC's and confirmed it was, well, SLOW. 99% of my data is sitting on RAID-1 or 5 subsystems and backed up daily (thankfully
For corporate backups the data flows from hard drive to hard drive. Sits on RAID-5 servers going to a portable drive where it is dumped onto RAID-1 subsystems in multiple locations.
DVD is good for archiving movies/home videos in native format (so any DVD player can view them). Decent quality will give you 2 hours per DVD. Many more if you do something like I do and put them in MP4 format (~3 movies per DVD then).
A roaming laptop is great for a quick plug in to watch a archived movie as such. Otherwise any DVD player is good. The problem is it's only 4.7G worth which can easily be eaten up when users have 60-80G hard drives.
1-2G hard drives were the norm once CD-RW became the "norm" and you could do a lot of damage with 600 or 700M CD's. DVD's are barely usable (today) for backup needs and the speed still stinks for all flavors (+/-RW or RAM).
BLUE LASER with +20G is worth waiting a bit longer for, IMHO. That's large enough to be useful for movies (easily) and backing up data in chunks as needed. SPEED will be key or else it'll take too damn long. 4x at a minimum to start.
With blue laser coming along, what, next year (somewhat mainstream realistically)? I'm thinking the industry waited too long and bickered among themselves for too long (+, - or RAM) that the listed technology will be surpassed and old hat. It is for me at least...
I gave up using tape for backups because it was too costly and time-consuming. For my audio engineering work, DVD-R is fantastic. I recently did a project that archived neatly onto 6 DVDs. That cost me a grand total of $20 for media and about the same amount of time to archive as did my Ecrix VXA1. However, the archives are infinitely more accessible, as I can open the disc on any machine with a DVD-ROM, regardless of having a VXA drive around. And, the files are instantly accessible, without having to restore from tape.
DVD-RW is fantastic!
Jory
I have the sony drive that does all the + and - R/RW I found + do not work in a lot of DVD drives I have tried and my minus I have yet to have fail.
With the new high capacity disks/readers coming out I don't see much of a point buying these now.
Why get a dvd that holds a piddly 5gb when you can get 20gb capacity, hopefully these new discs/drives will come down in price soon.
One of the reviewed drives, the Pioneer A05, is the "golden standard" for creating DVDs that will play back easily on set top boxes.
Yes, they don't handle the +R/W standard, but I seriously doubt that -R/W is going away anytime soon. By the time it does, dual drives will be goinng for under $75, so the risk is small.
You can find them for under $150 now, and they work pretty well with cheap media. Although many folks caution against Princo's, I've yet to create a coaster or something that won't play back correctly on a set top with the newer 4x "purple" media. You can get them for just over $1 each in small bulk, too, and they Just Work.
Since the A05 is so popular, you can find all kinds of intriguing hacked firmware and the like that enable new abilities...there's even a rumor going around that the newer, dual media A06 is really an A05 with different firmware. Wouldn't hold my breath, but you never know...
Is there even a point to making disc RW and burners that can do RW? From my experience with CDs, RW are slower to burn, more expensive, and not as compatible. With CDRs costing less than what floppies used to sell for, RW capabilities are pointless. Just pop a new disc in instead. I can see DVDs going the same route as it matures. So why bother wasting the money for RW.
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Most new drives are dual-format burners, so it's a moot point anyway. Pioneer has just released their A06 which burns both formats.
But as with all things, it's not always the technically superior product that's the standard, it's whatever is cheapest and easiest for people to get their hands on.
N.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
Another great alternative to a DVD burner is a firewire hard drive. Last I checked, a person can get a fairly decent 160GB firewire or USB2.0 hard drive for the same amount as a DVD burner. It reads and writes quite a bit faster, too. Not quite as portable as a DVD, but it's great at LAN parties.
This set of reviews is absolutely useless. They don't do into covering the two most important things in any DVD-Burner: Player compatability and DVD-blank compatability.
All +/-R crud aside (and most of the newer drives like the Sony DRU500 and Pioneer A06 do dual format anyway), the biggest issue for someone who's going to buy a DVD burner is whether the discs they burn will play in their set top player, and other people's. This article doesn't even consider that fact.
Other posters will touch on this I'm sure - DVD's aren't the ideal backup solution. They're alright, but really what DVD is good for is storing video. I think the number of people buying DVD burners to use for backup is a whole lot smaller than the audience who actually want to make DVDs they can play on their television, or bring to their friend's house.
Finally, all these drives are OLD news. The A05 has already been superceded by the A06 from Pioneer, the review doesn't mention a Sony drive at all, and Plextor has just announced their new 8x DVD+R/4x DVD-R burner that will come out sometime in the next month. Perhaps if this review was posted maybe 4 months ago it would be relevant.
I could recommend a bunch of sites with relevant reviews, but I'd rather not get them slashdotted. Check the almighty google for reviews, hopefully ones which aren't practically devoid of useful information like this one.
"I want to get more into theory, because everything works in theory." -John Cash
But how long does a burned DVD last? That is my question. I don't want to burn a disk with all my digital photos on it only to find out 5 years later that the dye (or whatever is on a DVD) fades and is no longer readable.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
Just use what works
It's all very well to rave about using a DVD burner as a backup device but AFAIK there still isn't a Windows server OS that supports DVD burning yet. I haven't looked at this for a couple of months but I was researching this on a couple of HP Servers we had that only had a gig or so of data to be backed up. Pricewise a DVD kills any of the proprietary tape solutions. Tape software is bloated and overly complicated to use and you can only restore files to a server that has the same type of SCSI drive installed in it. DVD backup would greatly simplify the data only backup process for many many small businesses and yet they still get shafted on backup hardware and software that really shouldn't be required in this day and age.
I think it's a conspiracy between the tape vendors and M$. You can't image a Windows Server and you can't backup files on a Windows server using a DVD drive. It would be an ideal solution for many small businesses but the only way to backup files is to do it from a workstation.
It's a real shame too. When a 40GB SCSI tape solution costs $1500+ and most servers come with 80GB of disk space minimum you start to wonder what the backup industry has been doing over the past 7 or 8 years while the hard drive manufacturers have added so much more space to store data.
That's my 2c
John the Kiwi
Since then I've owned three different burners myself and exchanged discs with many people, and the one consistent "feature" seems to be you never know exactly when (or why) a disc will just "go bad." I've had discs that worked one week suddenly refuse to respond the next week even when trying to pull the data off with something like isobuster. I've lost I don't know how many thousands of files like this (no, not just porn) and it's not just discs from my own drives; I can watch one of four discs of the scifi channel's "Dune" series because the other three, which I got from a friend, simply refuse to play. Why? I don't know; there's no shmutz on the disc, and I can't find a single hole.
And that's the other thing: what happened to EFM and redundancy and storing nonconsecutive bits on the disc? A single tiny pinhole should NOT be making an entire file (or, if it's big enough, an entire disc) unreadable. The TDK I got a decade ago can still be read through many scratches. I can only assume it's because of the increased speed we all record at - which tells me that these DVDs - already an incredibly fragile format even in "store bought" form - are going to be even less reliable than CDR. No way in hell will I ever again trust my data to a CD "backup" alone - much less a DVD.
So far as I can see all these are good for is making DVDs - and who cares about those old fashion things any more? Sure, it's alright for bringing home a box of bits from the store - but if you're going to trade with a friend it's just as easy to stick a hard drive in a box. And the data transfer is faster, and the media, ultimately, far more reliable.
Nope, Pioneer does.
This is the /. week to like Sony, right?
Not for me it's not. My Sony DRU500 has died on me TWICE so far. The first time took me 4 hours to get an RMA number the second time was easier since all I had to say is that it had the same problem as before.
If it dies again, I'll throw it away and buy a Pioneer or some other brand.
Visit the Arcade Restoration Workshop @ http://www.arcaderestoration.com
I used to *love* Sony, then my Sony DVD player crapped out less than two years after I bought it due to a design flaw. Sony knows about it, but is doing nothing about it, despite (or more likely because) a large number of customer complaints.
I bought a Panasonic to replace it and am happy now.
Any other brands that actually stand behind their product out there?
Chris
1) A Standard emerges that most if not all DVD Writers Adopt.
So get one of the multi-format drives from Sony (the DRU50x series) , Pioneer (the new A06 just released) or LiteOn (haven't seen it but I've heard it's just a rebadged Sony). I have a Sony and it works great.
2) Price Drops Below $100 to get more mainstream.
They're not there yet, but the prices are dropping like a rock. I paid $350 for a Sony DRU500AX just a few months ago (compared to $500 for my first CD burner lo these *mumble* years ago). You can now buy a Pioneer A06 for $209 at Newegg. Also, per MB DVD media is rather cheaper than CD.
3) Write speed gets faster. Particually the Write Speed of CD-R's.
The Sony will burn CD's at 24X. I know it's not 52X but come on, how fast does it really need to be? For me it was a step up anyway as I was upgrading from a Plextor 12X burner, but 24X is pretty speedy.
I've heard people gripe at how long it takes to burn DVD's as well. It takes me 30 minutes to burn a DVD-R at 2X, and when generic 4X media is cheap enough it'll only be 15 minutes. Considering how much data is being burned that's pretty darned fast.
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
I am (as I type this) wrestling with a Pioneer DVR-104. Ive updated MB bios, the drive's bios, this that and the other thing. Running under Windows XP Pro, and HATING the damn thing...