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DVD Writer RoundUp
CodeHog writes "Got socks instead of the new DVD writer you were looking for this holiday season? Tom's Hardware has a writeup on the latest DVD writers and their 'true speeds'. The conclusions may be surprising: higher speeds won't necessarily do any good as media availability continues to be a problem." From the article: "Despite the stagnation of write speeds for DVD-R and DVD+R at 16x, new DVD writers are regularly being marketed, since performance for other types of writing (RW and dual-layer) is still improving. But as is customary, manufacturers of writers have a lead on media manufacturers. For this article, we visited all the stores to see what types of media are actually available for sale, and once again the result was most enlightening. You can find 16x-compatible -R and +R discs, but in the other formats they simply aren't out there."
Yes, you can find some, but they're not avaiable in the same specs the high end PATA versions. Are they that difficult to make? Because it seems like this would be a good way to at least get the enthusiasts buying new drives. I'd like to make my next computer purely SATA based.
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That's what I can't understand about these types of reviews. So what if one drive can write faster than any other if I lose the data a couple years before the other drives' outputs. Maybe people who back up data constantly for a living might be concerned with the speed, but for my money, I'll burn as slow as needed to achieve a consistantly readable disk.
This review would be much more interesting if they showed some quality data with each burner.
None of the drives reviewed have Mt. Rainier functionality. I thought that was to become ubiquitous by now. Aren't Mt. Rainier error recovery aspects the only way DVD can compete with DVD RAM for data discs?
By media compatibility, I mean how well the drive does on different brands of media. This varies greatly between drives, and is one of the most important pieces of information you can have to get the most out of your drive.
In the CD-RW and DVD-RW arena, I'll be slower to judge as I haven't seen the same kind of variances; then again, once I've purchased RW media, I don't need to purchase more so I haven't seen a wide variety of brands in this area. I suspect that a similar situation exists.
I haven't even touched DL-R or DL-RW yet - the media costs are prohibitive. Who wants to pay 8-10x as much per platter for a medium which only delivers around 1.8x the data density?
In the end, I'm not too sure I care so much about write times (hey, I can spare a few extra seconds when I burn a DVD or CD - it's not like I do so for a living), so much as data reliability, medium durability, media cost and compatibility.
Bottom line - while the drive is important, it's nothing without the media; so long as the drive functions correctly, it seems likely that there's more to be gained by selecting the proper media for use in the drive.
NEVER trust a DVD writer review that praises plextor? Plextor *USED* to make the best writers, but their 740 series has a VERY HIGH failure rate, and the 716 is actually a remarked Benq drive!
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
I've noticed that strange things happen with storage technology. First we had 5.25" floppies. I used the same 5.25" floppies for months and had no troubles with bad sectors and unreadable files. Than 3.5" appeared and we have just realized that old-style floppies are not reliable and loosing data due to disk error is really easy. 3.5" disk was hard to damage and could be used for months or even years. After that, the era of CDs/CD-R/CD-RW began. Diskettes again appeared very unreliable. At some moment, I've realized that I'm not sure that I'll be able to read data written on the floppy I bought yesterday! But, CD-R or CD-RW seemed everlasting and very, very, very reliable storage medium. There was no such thing like unreadable CD. The CD drive speeds was growing, but the quality and reliability was going down! Now we have DVD era, and when I burn a CD with my CD-RW, I always check that the data was written correctly and can be read. Sometimes, I have even to burn a disk two times to be absolutely sure. Probably the DVD storage medium will have the same fate. Will it ever end?
> Lite-ON
Ugh! Dell uses them in computers, and some models have a near 100% failure rate! Do some research before recommending garbage like that.
As an example, in the last batch of 480 computers we bought from Dell, we've replaced almost 600 Lite-On DVD/CDR drives. That's more than 1 per computer. The only reason we haven't replaced more than that is that we've started replacing the drives with Sony's that we pay for out of our pocket rather than using the Dell 3 year on-site warranty we paid a lot of money for. Dell doesn't give a damn about their customers, so they continue to screw us over by continuing to use those pitiful drives, so we had to pay for our own drives out of our pocket.
> Lite-ON
This post is hilarious for so many reasons.
Ugh! Dell uses them in computers, and some models have a near 100% failure rate!
Bullshit. No model of ANYTHING that has a "100% failure rate" will remain available for long.
Do some research before recommending garbage like that.
Anyone who did research Lite-On quality, will find most people have very good things to say about them.
As an example, in the last batch of 480 computers we bought from Dell, we've replaced almost 600 Lite-On DVD/CDR drives. That's more than 1 per computer.
Did you try upgrading the firmware yourselves (to a real Lite-On firmware) or just get the Dell morons to replace the drives with the same drives with same potentially broken firmware? I have had terrible trouble with Dell in the past too, but that was trouble with DELL. I call complete and utter bullshit on this post.
The only reason we haven't replaced more than that is that we've started replacing the drives with Sony's that we pay for out of our pocket rather than using the Dell 3 year on-site warranty we paid a lot of money for.
Ahhh, here's an education for you then... Sony CDRW drives are made by... wait for it... Lite-On. Oh, and they are not made to Sony specification or design, they are Lite-On designed and built, with slightly modified firmware to pretend to be a Sony, complete with Sony top sticker and Sony faceplate. I'm not sure how many Sony DVDRW drives are made by Lite-On, but I beleive I have seen at least one laptop Sony DVDRW drive with, oddly enough, a Lite-On sticker on top.
Dell doesn't give a damn about their customers, so they continue to screw us over by continuing to use those pitiful drives, so we had to pay for our own drives out of our pocket.
Yes, Dell sucks. Lite-On however, do not churn out "pitiful drives". This I can state with absolute certainty and authority. They may have made some less than fantastic models, but I don't know of any. The general drive quality coming out of Lite-On is top notch. Which is why MANY VERY VERY BIG brand names are confident in letting Lite-On make "thier" drives.
The truth, is probably that Dell modified the Lite-On OEM firmware, as is typical, and fucked it up, as is typical of Dell.
War crimes, torture, lies, illegal spying... Would someone give Bush a blowjob, already, so he can be impeached?