Right now, I've been looking at this one. However, there may be a better one.

All I'm looking for is 8x - 16x for DVD reading/writing, and around 32x - 48x for CD reading/writing. DVD-RAM support is also a must.

Besides watching DVD's, I'll be primarily making lossless backups of a few more CD's I've bought since it died, along with ripping them to Vorbis so I can throw the songs on my DAP.


Any suggestions?

This is a good thread:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=46817

And here's some other recent ones:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=49651
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=49510

I am very happy with my LG GSA-4167B (see first thread quoted), which can write to DVD-RAM.

I'm not happy with mine. I'll get a Benq for my new machine.

Gamit, what problems are you having?

Mine's still quite young, and doesn't get a huge amount of use, so I'm wondering whether I should be expecting issues to occur in time.

So far though the burn quality has been superb, and ripping is fast and accurate.

Ironically, the last thing I burned was a CD with different songs from CD's I backed up and compressed to FLAC.

Used Burrrn to do it. Worked rather nicely.


Can it read DVD-RAM?

Sympatic Soul:
I have troubles reading some DVDs that read fine on other machines. But it seems to be unit dependant. The quality of the drives of this model seem to vary. You can find many complains on the net about that drive, but I also personally know people that are perfectly happy with it.

After searching again, I think I'm going to go with an LG GSA-H10N.

LMAO! Yes, very good.

OK, thanks for the info. Maybe I'll investigate more myself as well.

Check out this thread:
http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=166553

Pioneer DVR-111D is a superb writer (c't rated it very highly in burn quality). It can read DVD-RAM by default. It can be crossflashed to DVR-111L with a minute of work to enable DVD-RAM writing and LabelFlash support. The drive is like $30.

I just picked up an LG GSA-H22N and so far I really like it. What convinced me was the thread on CD Freaks where people are posting their scans of DVD's. It's not only writing very good on good media, but on mediocre media as well.

I am also very happy with my LG GSA-4167B and can fully recommend it. There is though a problem with using the drive together with some specific PSUs which the drive can't handle, but i have never had any problem, and i use a cheap low-power PSU, but there are people who do experience problems as Gambit's post and link indicates. IMHO, it is a good DVD writer if using good media, and it rips CD-DAs very fast. I however have changed to only burning DVD+R's at 8x only, based on a comment by CiTay about a c't review where that was recommeded for the drive, or else it would lead to bad results. I also only use MCC004(not from india because of bad QC issues), or T003 DVD+R 16x media(Taiyo Yuden). For CD-DA extraction, then the drive has problems with very scratched discs, as it dosen't feature the worlds best CD error correction, but if the discs are decent, then the drive is great and very fast. It also has accurate C2 pointer support and only caches 37KB, which means that is dosen't need cache-flushing in EAC + it supports "HTOA" and has a 0 write samples offset. EAC only needs cache-flushing if the drive caches 64KB or above, and this is also why EAC says "Caching : No" when testing e.g. LG drives in EAC for drive features, since EAC will report "Caching : No" either if the drive dosen't cache audio, or if it caches audio but under 64KB. It's also a good CD-R writer if using good media(i have after reading up alot on the subject(jitter etc), gone over to writting audio CD-Rs at 16x and data CD-Rs at 32x). This drive is pretty old though and newer models has succeded it, but as i am not completely sure that the LG GSA-H10A/N dosen't feature a CD-DA extraction speed-lock, then i can't really recommend them, atleast untill it is known for sure if it has that or not...