Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler dvd burners

i know ill get good answers here on this subject-i need a dvd burner for my expansion bay.i dont want to spend a fortune,but i want a good quality built unit.so far the one that catches my eye the most is the samsung sm352-its pretty cheap,and i have grown to trust samsung lately,but i know nothing about computer equiptment-put it this way,i just cancelled my dial-up connection last week-thanks in advance.....ron

Are you going to use it for backing up? It would be a good unit to consider. Personally, I'm waiting on the dual layer burner. It will give you the same capacity that the commercial DVD media holds. At least that's what everyone is saying...

Tom

Extremetech has a good article about DVD burners. Almost all of them are good these days. It's mostly a matter of how quickly you want to burn your data. They also have a review of the latest Sony Dual Layer burner which would get you a tiny bit of future proofing (say 4 months! )

jr

Contrary to what some ppl say, I would steer clear of Lite-On. I work on puters for a living and I've seen WAY too many of those fail. Plus I've read some article somewhere explaining how Lite-On doesn't adhear to some specifications when buring.

Plextor and Pioneer are your friends.

I agree. Lite On is junk. It ships with Dells (sometimes)and I have trouble with these all the time.

I've had no experience with Lite-on myself. Every burner I have owned (and passed on to friends in working order) was Plextor. So I'd have no problem recommending a plextor.

jr

I have not had any problem with any Lite-On that I have ever had...two cd-burners, and one DVD-ROM. It is my understanding they even OEM some of Plextor's drives.

Right now I use a Pioneer A05....works great.

I think it's like buying a brand of car and always having it in the shop. It may not be a bad brand or model. Just bad luck. It gives you a bad image of the brand, even if it was just a fluke.

Tom

in my opinion the best burner of cheap media is the NEC 2500A. The firmware can be flashed to make it the 2510A which is the DL burner. Its the exact same drive, just different 'original' firmware.

The best reader of DVDs is Lite-on.

If you have scratched DVDs or are burning/reading some cheap media get a lite-on to read it and an NEC to burn it.

http://club.cdfreaks.com/forumdisplay.php?f=61
http://forum.rpc1.org/

also, Newegg.com has the best prices on computer parts. I just bought the NEC2500 burnerfor 68.00 and the lite on 166s for 26$.

FYI-lite on is very reputable. they make sony's DVD readers(same drive, different name) and some of plextors(i think).

these are the sites to go to if you want to do your research.

NEC issued a statement recommending against flashing the 2500 up to a 2510, because the 2510 must meet stricter hardware guidelines. The 2510(Dual Layer) is only $84.99 shipped from newegg:

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=27-152-021&depa=1