Optical Drive Down

Was just getting ready to play some Rollercoaster Tycoon 2 via Wine when bam -- my DVDRW drive lets go. Well, technically, the disc did; I've been playing it for some time even though it was cracked about 1/4 of the way through. I never expected it to fly apart inside the drive; I just expected it to eventually reach the point where it couldn't be read at all, then I'd go bargain-bin hunting to find a replacement.

My mistake, it seems.

So now I'm out an optical drive. It's probably not safe to use ever again even if I'm sure I got the last of the disc fragments out.

Ah well. I've been wanting to switch to SATA burners anyway. This gives me an excuse to buy two, instead of the single drive I've had.

I don't think I'll buy Samsung again, though. That thing should have a read of 48x, but instead it's closer to 12x. Write speeds are better, though only half to 3/4 of the advertised speed even when using the rated media. Unless this is something Linux-wide, or a K3b issue, I think Samsung's optical drives leave a lot to be desired.

Time to go shopping...I wonder if there are any good quality SATA burners on the market. All I've seen are rather lackluster LG and Samsung models.

Bah. Being driveless sucks. My workstation is out of commission for awhile. No music, no media, no fun.

This entry was posted on June 20th, 2007 at 12:22:35 am and is filed under Miscellaneous, Hardware.

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7 comments

Comment from: robbat2 [Visitor]

For a new burner, Plextor PX-755SA.
:-)

06/20/07 @ 01:57

Comment from: Josh Saddler [Member]

· http://dev.gentoo.org/~nightmorph

@robbat2:

Looks decent enough, but it's about 3 to 4 times as much as I'm willing to pay for a single drive, and it doesn't even do Lightscribe!

Were it not for those things (and I can't find a review that talks about how much noise it makes; quiet drives are a must for me!), it'd be very tempting.

06/20/07 @ 05:27

Comment from: Donnie Berkholz [Visitor]

· http://spyderous.livejournal.com/

No music? Heard of Internet radio? =) Exaile comes with a nice big list of stations, which it gets from shoutcast.

06/20/07 @ 05:35

Comment from: robbat2 [Visitor]

Plextor probably has newer models that do LightScribe, that Plextor is one I bought more than a year ago now, when it was the only SATA DVD burner on the market. It did very good duty burning my wedding DVDs (~150 in total).

06/20/07 @ 06:07

Comment from: Josh Saddler [Member]

· http://dev.gentoo.org/~nightmorph

@Donnie:

I mean I need my CD audio music, my precccciiioousss!! Yessss, it needsssss itsss CDssss, it does, oh yessss....

@robbat2:

Sure, I've even found one that does...for about 4x or 5x the cost of any other identical drive. ;)

So far, I'm really thinking about a pair of ASUS drives, either the 2x same burner drive, or a burner/reader combo; I've been reading great things about this one (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827135143); it's cheaper than getting two burners. It's not like I can realistically expect to burn two discs at once, right? Can't imagine when I'd be doin' that.

06/20/07 @ 07:15

Comment from: Caster [Visitor]

You're pretty hazardous, putting cracked media into the drive :) Never heard about centrifugal force that's great with high rotating speeds? :) I think some drives even have a warning on the front of the tray that you shouldn't put damaged media inside :)

Also, I think you wrongly expect 48x read for DVD media, that's for CD, 12x sounds right for DVD.

And yeah, low writing speed is issue of linux and k3b for some people, including me :( Haven't found the cause yet. But surprisingly, NeroLinux on the same system performs good.

06/20/07 @ 09:23

Comment from: Alex Maclean [Visitor]

Look into the Pioneer DVR-212. I have three PATA examples of Pioneer drives (110D and a pair of 111Ds), and they work wonderfully. They're also relatively cheap.

06/20/07 @ 14:21

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