I recently purchased an LG-brand DVD drive. I've been Googling franticly trying to discover whether or not people have had problems with the drive in regard to CD reading/rippping (I've asked elsewhere about other functions) but so far have turned up nothing particularly useful.

So, if anyone knows of (or, in some random event has the same drive) this drive - (this is what EAC lists it as) HL-DT-STDVDRAM GSA-H10L, I'd be interested and appreciative if you could relate to me anything pertinent to its ripping/reading abilities.

Here -
http://www.daefeatures.co.uk/search.php
has some possible info. Not your exact drive though.

Search http://club.cdfreaks.com/ for a program called cachex to extract some more info from the drive. Neither of these comment on the drive's DAE quality though, just features.

I used Cache Ex.

Didn't get a comprehensive readout on the first go 'round but I chalk that up to my lack of knowing how to deal with the command prompt adequately.

The drive came bundled with Nero, so I ran the CDSpeed tests on it (and subsequently my old NEC CD-ROM drive) and learned a bit.

The only last question I can think to ask is -

Is it possible to detect a drive's overread ability? I realize reliance on what's been previously reported is probably a safe bet but it wouldn't hurt to investigate personally, in my opinion. Edit: RTFM'd myself on CDSpeed and created a test CD with it, the drive overreads into the lead-out only.

Also, beyond that - is overread related to the firmware? Or is it simply what's built into the drive itself and will likely stay as is unless the drive is replaced with an entirely different one that supports overread differently?

I'm not sure about the quality of ripping, but some of my friends here who bought LG drives found the build quality lacking, e.g. the drive starts to give strange noises on spin-up and unnerving vibrations after 3 months.

I cant say for sure but I highly doubt the drive overreads. Plextor drives are the only brand that reliably overread.

i've not personally encountered any vibration instances. the noise on spin-up seems relatively common (to me at least), but i've not had the experience of running a vast array of drive models in order to know what should sound "technically" normal and what should start making me want to evaluate things a bit further.

aside from that, it doesn't sound akin to chucking a disc in a garbage disposal. i'd be far more worried if it did.

It's not the usual spin-up noise.

It's more like deep rumbling, followed by a purring sound, before the whine of the spin-up. These unusual noises causes the table to vibrate a bit, I can see ripples on the surface of water (in my drinking glass).

Lately, the CD can't burn in high speed. Oh, it can burn, but there's 50% chance that other drives can't read it.

I am planning to replace the drive with a Lite-On I salvaged from my PC (rest in peace, dear friend... you've been a great companion :'( )