Unfortunately my old Pioneer DVD-116 drive died after a few months of usage and I'm about to get a brand new dvd-rom in the next couple of days. After some research I concluded that Samsung SD-816B or a Lite-On model would be great for my case, but I would like to get your opinion based on your experience...here's what I'm looking for:

1) Accurate and fast audio extraction.
2) Good copying capabilities and support for various dvd (mostly) formats...this is for my own copies and not for pirating stuff (I always keep my original titles safe elsewhere and use to play the copies alone).
3) Ability to read Cactus Shield protected audio cds (in order to avoid having my mp3-player wasted).
4) I don't really mind if it's region locked.
5) It would be great if it's not much noisy (but I can live with it).
6) Good seek times.

So what do you think? Any recommendation for a good, stable and trustworthy drive that fulfils most of the aforementioned features?

Lite-On drives have a good reputation forworking well with copy protected discs. My Lite-On 163 has been quite adept at ripping CDS200 protected discs. I doubt you'll be able to get that model anymore though.

It seems that Lite-On drives are a rare species in my place, but if I have to I might even order it from abroad, so that's no problem. I've read good things about Lite-On LTD 163 myself as well, but I'll keep the suggestions coming in case I missed something important. Thanks for your comments

LiteOn provides OEM drives for several companies (Sony, Buslink, etc) and they have the same quality and performance as the originals.

That's useful tip LIF, thanks.

There are a few Sony models around but I didn't really check them out. I'll surely do after the new information.

Not always. When they have a different firmware, they perform different.

Hmm...I need to do some thorough research then. Finding a suitable dvd-rom is harder than I first expected. Ci-Tay any suggestion based on your own experience?

The Lite-On LTD-166S / XJ-HD166 is pretty okay for ripping, i have one myself.

if you ever want to rip DVD's with it i suggest you stay clear of SONY...

Lite-On has also reported some problems ripping dvd's....

in that case i would suggest a Pioneer again friend of mine just got the 121 and it works great.. better than his NEC1300A 4x dvd-burner

Weirdly this 121 model isn't mentioned in Pioneer's site, but I guess it will probably be exactly the same in specifications as models 119, 120. Honestly I'm a bit prejudiced against Pioneer after my old drive died that fast. Of course it might have been jus a bad case.

A friend of mine has been through two Pioneer drives in a quite short time. I witnessed it myself, in the end, they barely read any CD/DVD anymore..

This comes to support my fears! (I faced the exact same situation as your friend...after 2-3 months didn't recognize any cd at all).

I'll probably end up with a LiteOn model (as long as I can find one around)...better deal with a few ripping problems, than with a broken piece of hardware at hands.

ive been using a sony DDU1612 for about a year now with no problems whatsoever, im at college and ive ripped a few DVDs with it from my home collection and it worked fine with that, and i use it to rip most of my music, though i still have yet to decide which is better for ripping, the DDU1612 or my yamaha CRW-F1E

does plextools work with plextor DVD-Rom?