Hi folks,

I am planning to buy a new CD Writer and have the following options with me (availability and price)

1. Iomega 40X
2. Samsung/Acer 24X
3. Samsung 24X DVD combo drive

Anyone has any experiences with any of these ? I have learnt that the Iomega drive is actually a Plextor drive in another casing - at a much lesser price. The 24X ones are also very cheap and look good - I wonder if there'll be much difference in the 24X and 32X flavors. Plextor is too expensive compared to these and so I have ruled it out.

Thanks.

Regards,
experttech.

it would consider liteon 24x or 32x or 40x
even above plextor

1: They support read/writting of 90 and 99mins cd's (plextor does only 90mins)
2: they hav perfect LME recording (somthing plextors are still missing) which make you able to copy safedisc2 proctecte games
3: They have raw+96 read and write support. add this to #2 and you have the PERFECT "protected disc" replicator drive.
4: They are cheap
5: You can get them with black fronts


plexto where the best in the 12 and 16 burner but liteon are way ahead of them now.

It depends a lot on what you're planning to use the drive for:

-Burning data
-Ripping & Burning cdda (audio)
-backup protected media (CloneCD & Co)

Some drives perform better in one task, other do another job better.

If you are considering a combo drive you apparantly do not own a DVD drive yet. In that case it is a economical solution.

Mostly for burning data - backing up my data and music files. Rarely for burning ACDs and very rarely for backing up protected media.

I have both a 2x CD-Writer (HP 7200) and a 40x CD-Writer (the new LG).

Well I think 40x is totally unnecessary. I have tried quite a lot of different media brands and most of them produce errors at the highest speeds. For most cases I limit the speed to 8x and I don't mind waiting 10 mins for a burn to be finished.

So my advice is not to go for a high speed CD-Writer, maybe up to 16x is all you need. Concentrate on other features instead: quality of DAE, ability to read/copy protected CDs, burn proof, etc... If you can, get a retail Plextor, lots of people seem to recommend them, plus plextor supplies some tools that allow ripping and copying of protected CDs (copying removes the protection of audio CDs!!!).

Have a look at http://www.plextor.be/English/technical/plextools.html for some info on PlexTools, plus an upgrade to the latest version.

In case you get an OEM CD-Writer that does not come with PlexTools, do a search on Google, they are plenty of places to download it from. Anyone reading, don't bother downloading it if you do not have a Plextor CD-Writer: it will not work.

Sven_bent,

Small details matter: Plextor now also has a writer with a Black Bezel (and they call it a "special edition")

I second that. I bought the Lite-On 40x at Newegg.com for under a hundred U.S. bucks. So far it has performed great.

Thats what I fear the most. Even though many brands of CDRs are rated as 16X or 24X, I have heard that they usually return errors at the highest speeds. But again, today 32X media is widely available (HP 32X media is supposed to be rock solid).

Phew!

then why are you seconding (is this an actual word?!?) me when i say the liteon 24 or 32 or 40 is better then plextor ????

i said i woudl put them ABOVE plextor, that is that i consider them better then plextor from a tecnical point of view



i know i sell them :-) but the nero CD that comes with the speciel edition are unreadable... :-) another small detailt that might just show the plextor is not op to there former top quality

QUOTE

So he's just saying he agrees with what you're saying...

qristus, grammar fairy

Any opinions about any Samsung Writers ?

I've used two different 24x CD-R drive so far, and BOTH of them produce errors (damaged sectors, not coasters), even when writing at lower speeds! Both the AOPen 24x10x40 (CRW2440) and the Plextor 24/10/40A.

With my old AOpen 6x4x24 drive, it never produced a single errors, discs always pass "quality check" 100%. It doesn't happen with the two newer drives I've tried, usually I get at least 1%-5% "damaged" (but readable) sectors, no matter what writing speed is used. I have no idea why.

For ultimate reliability, I'd recommend a used/refurbished/NOS 8x4x24 or 6x4x24 drive!

Edit -- I second the notion on the Plextor. The only advantage I noticed over the AOpen (and other drives) is more accurate reading (reads almost any data CD beautifully and very fast). Build quality is a bit better than other drives. Also, if you want fancy manuals, cables & (theoretical) tech support, great for 'newbie' users but not for much of anythings else. This is the first and last time I waste extra money buying a Plextor *anything*.

"Plextools" doesn't seem to be included with the U.S. retail versions of the drive, instead some piece of crap called "Plextor Manager 2000." It really looks like a piece of junk.

@ fewtch

Perhabs you are using a bad IDE-cable.

I would suggest you to try a cable with 80 Pins and which is not longer than 45 cm long, if you are not using such a cable already.

I doubt it... why would a bad EIDE cable produce perfectly good reads, perfectly good writes (no coasters)... but only with some 'damaged sectors' on the media?

And it works fine (same cable) with the older, slower drive.

Edit -- I checked it, and it is 80 pins (don't know about the length). The drive is set to "slave" off a Toshiba DVD-ROM drive.

Strangely, a 40-pin cable was included with the Plextor drive in the retail box.

Have you tried looking at the Ricoh line?

I am using a Ricoh MP7163A, perfect for everything.

Audio extraction is near flawless, in EAC I get 24X at the outer tracks of Audio CDs and 10X on the inner tracks.

Other things burning is superb, not one bad disc yet.

Cheers
AgentMil

Everyone says burning is superb (as long as there are no coasters), try a CD quality test for bad sectors with "CD Speed" located here:

http://www.cdspeed2000.com

Try the "Extra/Scandisc/Surface Scan" option & see if the CD-R really is being written perfectly.

What speed do you burn at?

By the way how many of you do here are able to burn successfully at 32X

Edit: Corrected spelling

I always burn at 10x for all my CDs.

fewtch I shall try that, thanks for the link.

Cheers
AgentMil

You can check this site:
http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Hardware/All.asp

It has some reviews about Samsung writers.

Artur.

Ok tried that CDSpeed program by Nero, no problems encountered doing the surface scan on three of my CD-Rs (Kodak Ultima). So I guess Ricoh burning is superb.

Thanks again to fewtch for the link to the program.

Cheers
AgentMil

My pleasure. Sounds like quality media too... maybe my problem is using cheap-ish media like Memorex, TDK, etc. I'm really not sure what the problem is, maybe I'll actually try using a 40-pin connector cable instead, & see if the DMA mode of the Plextor (whichever one it is) still works. I might try switching master/slave jumpers too.

Cheers...

Well, I wasted several CD-R's trying different things, I still get "bad sectors" on any burned disc:

(1) Changing from 80-pin to 40-pin cable (came with the Plextor) -- no difference, a little slower maybe... still bad sectors.
(2) Changing Plextor to master, DVD-ROM to slave -- no difference, a little faster maybe... still bad sectors.
(3) Turning off DMA -- very slow writing of course with heavy CPU usage, no other difference... still bad sectors on the final CD-R.

Then I noticed the master switch on my (under-monitor) surge protector died (won't switch off). Damnit... ...well at least it died in the "on" position...

When I say "I second that", that's just my way of saying I agree with your statement .

Well, in the end, depends on who's manufacturing the CDs.

Ricoh sells CDs produced by themselves (Ricoh Inc.) which are very good, but sell some produced by Ritek too. Ritek didn't get high marks at Cdmediaworld's [URL=http://www.cdmediaworld.com/hardware/cdrom/cd_quality.shtml#CD-R Quality Overview]tests[/URL].

The best brands (manufacturers), according to their tests, are the usual: Mitsui Toatsu, Kodak, TDK, Pioneer, Ricoh and, of course, Taiyo Yuden.

Here are some CD factory infos:
http://www.cdmediaworld.com/hardware/cdrom...factories.shtml

Interesting to notice the "Personal Favorites" section - Taiyo Yuden is the clear winner!

Regards;

Roberto.

darn. just my bad english.
darn so many times i have misunderstand this simple sentence.

just to tell the writer i have had in my hands

Plextor 8x SCSI (good at the time)
Plextor 12x (good at the time)
Plextro 16x (good at the time)
Plextor 24 (sucsks*)
Plextor 40x(sucks*)
Richo 20x (ok)
Liteon 12x (sucks*)
Liteon 16x (sucks*)
liteon 24 (Perfect
Liteon32 (perfetct just faster)
Liteon 40 ( perfect jsut faster again)
Aopen 16 (suck*)
Aopen 24 (suck*)


*from a tecnoicla point oof view .. this is NOT to states that they are making coaster. juzt the have some limitations in advanced features... at there time being

what about Teac drives? I have read that they read with the best accuracy & write very well. From what all i have seen with lite-on drives you can wind up with a dud more easily than other companies, but if you get a good one you are golden. From what i have seen, i would say buy in this order for Reading & Writing Audio & Stability. (I don't know anything about backing up games, etc....) :naughty:


1. Teac & Lite-On
2. Yamaha
3. Plextor (newer drives) (40x ultraplex rocks for reading cds)

I noticed that article didn't even mention CMC Magnetics as a disc manufacturer, wonder why? Too cheap?

P.S... AOpen are supposed to make decent CD-RW burners too, dunno tho. They're made in Taiwan, like most of the others.

Nobody mentioned LG writers so far, what's wrong with them?
I really want to buy a new writer, that can also read DVD. Because i already have 2 Plextor drives in my system (SCSI PX-412C and PX-32ts) already, i need a combo drive!

I'm interested in the LG GCC-4120B (12x8x32 CD-RW Drive with 8x DVD-ROM Reading Capability) for just around 100€, it doesn't have to read Audio perfectly (Hey, got Plextor drives that i will still use for that, even if i get e new drive)

Thanks in advance, if somebody would answer my question(s)!

Yeah, even I forgot to mention about LG writers, another on my list of good (and economical!) drives. Another brand thats even lesser priced (in fact the least priced of all writers I have checked till now) is Acer.

QUOTE

Well CMC magnetics have a pretty bad name in the market for being highly incompatible across different writers. Even though you can burn em' the quality is supposedly bad - Imation is a common brand that uses CMC magnetics.

I still wonder if it's modern (read: fast) CD-writers that have the problem. I had no problem with a big spindle of Imation (CMC Magnetics) discs with the aforementioned Aopen 6x4x24 drive, not a single coaster, not even a single bad sector. CD burners have become totally "commoditized" and I don't think any care or attention is put into them anymore (even by Plextor). In fact, they're cheaper than regular old CD-ROM drives were just 5 years ago.

I own an LG 24x10x40x GCE-8240B and it has performed flawlessly since I recieved it about 5 months ago. I can burn 99 minute cd-r's to about 99:00 without errors, and it has a huge 8MB buffer and seamless-link technology to prevent buffer underuns. DAE is also very good, with no errors, and I usually start at 18.9x at the inside of the disc and hit 40-44x at the end of a long audio disc (in burst mode, of course).

The only downside is that the drive has a chip that "tests" the dye on the CD-R media before burning and chooses a speed based on the calculations to burn a disc with the least amount of errors. Unfortunately, I learned this the hard way when I bought a 100-disc spindle of cheapo CD-R's from Wal-Mart (for $17!) to make CD's for my new car. They are of course manufactured by none other than CMC Magnetics co. (they are branded "Durabrand") and will not burn faster than the slowest speed my burner allows, or 8x, though they are rated for 24x. Yet some CD-R's that say 16x will burn at 24x (such as my 99-minute blanks from the internet). Keep that in mind when choosing a burner. For me, it is an unecessary inconvienence. When I am burning something important, I usually burn at 8x w/ higher quality media anyway. But if I just need some tunes to pop in the car, I don't care if the CD has xxx amount of write errors, or if it will only last 5 years, so long as it plays when I pop it in the deck.

This sounds really interesting. Does it 'force' you to burn at the 'determined' speed or does it only 'recommend' it

i have a liteon 24x burner. works excellent. all 16x media ive tried has worked. pny,memorex all work at 24x.

I remember a little utility that can read the info section of a blank CD, and tell you which type and manufacturer it is (assuming the company writing it isn't lying to you).

Unfortunatly, I cant remember the name, or where to find it..

I usually buy bulk, no-name disks and it helped to identify the good ones, from the ones I'd tend to want to burn slower, or not buy next time!

Jon

Its called CDR Identifier. Download it here:

http://personal.vsnl.com/kartikj/cdrid163.zip

According to CDR Identifier all of the TDK (and Memorex) discs that I've purchased here in California have been manufactured by Ritek.

Rob

I've translated some 32x/40x CD-R tests. These new generation of CD-Rs show an unbelievably bad performance, previously only known from ultra-cheap noname CD-Rs. It also says something about the different CD writers. The article can be found here.


Verbatim CD-R 700 MB 32x:

Error rates skyrocket after the first half of the disc at 32x. Lowering the speed to 20x or 16x doesn't help much. Especially prone to this are the Plextor and Benq 40x drives. Lite-On 40x works a bit better with this disc. Average BLER is 26.43 errors/second. High. Good CD-Rs like the Teac 24 have 0.77 errors/sec here. Maximum was a surprising 196 errors/sec: immensely high! The hardware CD-R tester asserted both E22 and E32 (uncorrectable) errors - very bad! Atip (Absolute Time in Pregroove): 97m 34s 22f


Verbatim CD-R 700 MB 40x:

These Mitsubishi Chemicals CD-Rs are supposed to be for high recording speeds. The Benq-burner, however, accepts only 32x speed, and with high error rates. Plextor and Lite-On 40x burners managed to burn with 40x, but with exorbitant error rates (the Lite-On was a bit better). Average BLER is 59.91 errors/sec, this is too high for reliable data archiving. Maximum BLER is 433.17 errors/second: Way, way above spec... it's not funny anymore! The hardware analyzer detected E22-Errors, at least there were no E32-errors. Still, quality rating can only be 'very poor'. Atip (Absolute Time in Pregroove): 97m 34s 23f


Philips CD-R 80 40x:

It seems that Philips doesn't test their media. In the Benq 40x burner, the error rates were always above spec, same with the Plextor 40x. Data loss is likely. The Lite-On managed to do analyzable runs at 40x and 32x. BLER is 143 errors/sec average, 363.67 errors/sec maximum: A more than poor performance! To make things worse, the analyzer drive detected E22 and E32-errors. This CD-R is basically garbage. Atip (Absolute Time in Pregroove): 97m 15s 17f


Fujifilm CD-R 1-40x:

A CD-R with varying results. The 40x-max Benq burner decided to use 16x speed maximum, but with acceptable error rates. The Lite-On 40x burner wanted to use 32x, and this was a good decision, error rates are bearable. Only the Plextor goes all out and uses full 40x-speed for this CD-R: Bad move. Although the average BLER of 9.92 errors/sec is still okay, the maximum BLER of 103.17 errors/sec is out of question! Furthermore, there were E22 and E32-errors with the Plextor at 40x. Conclusion: This CD-R is unusable at 40x, the speed with the Plextor should be lowered manually by any means. Atip (Absolute Time in Pregroove): 97m 26s 45f




Addition to the test, most likely going online soon:


Imation CD-R 32x 700 MB:

Instable: This CMC Magnetics CD-R doesn't deliver. With the Plextor, Benq and Lite-On 40x-max burners, error rates are more than critical at 32x speed. The Lite-On burner managed to achieve half-decent results at 24x speed. The analyzer measured an average block error rate (BLER) of 30.02 errors per second, quite much. But the maximum BLER of 171.17 errors/sec is dangerous for data integrity. Furthermore, there were E22 and E32 errors. Conclusion: Don't use this CD-R for important data. Atip (Absolute Time in Pregroove): 97m 26s 66f

( http://www.pcwelt.de/tests/hardware-tests/rohlinge/24183/ )



Results of a good CD-R, to enable a comparison:

Teac CD-R 700 MB 24x:

This CD-R has an average BLER of only 0.77 errors/second and a maximum BLER of 14.83 errors/second. No E22 or E32 errors could be detected by our analyzer drive. Recommendable. ATIP (Absolute Time in Pregroove): 97m 27s 56f

( http://www.pcwelt.de/tests/hardware-tests/rohlinge/21643/ )

Well I wonder why the (widely available) HP CDRs with Taiyo Yuden made material was not tested These have been so far the best built CDRs I have used.

Yamaha CRW3200 e vk here...

Nero forces a low burning speed by default, but there is just to disable an option like "optimum speed thing" in Nero to be able to write at any speed on any CDR.

Buring 24x on HiSpace CarbonCD, no coaster
1 test : audio copy read with the Sony DDU1621 : bitwise identical to the original wav file.
The Memorex DVDmaxx 1640 has one line of error correction at the beginning of the rip, but nothing on 16x burned CDs.

Old Teac CDRs were Mitsui.

They tested many other CD-Rs as well, but what i wanted to point out is the tremendously bad quality of the new 32x and 40x CD-Rs. If you tell me which brands use Taiyo Yuden discs, i'll see if i can find a review of them.

Here:
[url]http://www.cdmediaworld.com/hardware/cdrom/cd_factories.shtml#CD Factories[/url]

Near the end of the table.

It actually "forces" the speed it decides, regardless of what I choose in the write-options dialouge in Nero. Nero will still say " burning at 24x (3600kb/sec)", but the drive will not spin up for zone-clv and stays in 8x mode the whole time (it should start at 16x and go up to 24x after the 22 minute mark). The 80 minute CD also takes 10 minutes to burn, hence 8x speed.

Does anyone know if *all* Taiyo Yuden (including 32x certified) are good media? I was thinking about buying a spindle here (bottom left link on the page):

http://www.cdrplanet.com/taiyoyuden.html

But I don't want to waste money if it's gonna be as bad as recent brands I've tried (insanely high BLER's just like the articles are talking about). In that case, I'll try a smaller order of Mitsui discs.

Thanks for any info...

It sounds like your version of Nero doesn't support or recognize your burner. Do you have the last one ?

I have version 5.5.8.2. Since the problem only occurs with the cheapo discs, it's probably more a function of the internal chip/firmware more so than the software. . the writer will only burn at 8x in CloneCD with the crap discs also. However, I don't have any problems with TDK or Memorex blanks, which burn at 24x. My CD-RW's also burn at the highest rated speed (10x). I guess the moral of the story here is to be careful about buying foot-high spindles of cheap media. . I'm stuck with burning at 8x until I get rid of all the discs, which could be close to forever!

Well I would definitely recommend the Taiyo Yuden - especially the branded ones. Thats why I've been wondering why is not HP mentioned anywhere. Im sure that Taiyo Yuden coupled with the build quality of HP will rock. The page you listed only mentions the unbranded ones, though.

But again, quality comes at a price. So what I generally do is buy about 25 HP disks for sensitive data and the remaining would be the (cheaper) Samsung (Ritek !) or unbranded media.

These reviews about high speed supporting media have really scared me

Hmm, i couldn't find tests there that explicitly mention the use of Taiyo Yuden discs.

But in the meantime, they tested another one of the new 32x CD-Rs. Sadly, it completely fails. This means that there's currently no usable 32x/40x CD-R on the market.


(Summary of http://www.pcwelt.de/tests/hardware-tests/rohlinge/24308/)

Benq CD-R 1x-32x:

This one didn't perform reliably on any of the 40x-max writers. The error rates were so high that our analyzer drive couldn't fully read the CDs and often stopped the testing process. The Plextor didn't even want to finish burning at 32x speed. The average BLER was 51.52 errors/second, very high. The maximum BLER of 211.67 is almost above the spec. Also, there were many E22 and E32 (uncorrectable) errors. It can't get much worse. Atip (Absolute Time in Pregroove): 97m 22s 67f

I've never seen an HP-branded CD-R. Where would a person go about buying them (in the USA)? Do you know?

Are there any other brands (particular speeds) you recommend? It's too bad there's no way to test a certain brand before buying a spool... and being marked as 16x max or 12x max is no guarantee of quality either!

I really wouldn't know what to buy at this point, for quality. Maybe the Mitsui discs listed at www.cdrplanet.com?

Finally... why would branded be better than unbranded? I hate paying for brand names when it's unnecessary.

Well HP is one brand you wont repent paying for ( I'm not doing any marketing for HP here )

I have a lot of HP CDs that I have burnt more than 3 years back which are in perfect condition and look like they'll remain that way. The unbranded ones I burnt lasted for a year or so before throwing up unreadable sectors.