[Albie]

I'm still not getting the practical answer I'm looking for. What
actually is known to work; that I can acquire from NewEgg et al?
Forget about the 4x. That solution is apparently history.
tia
Albie

[AZ Nomad[_2_]]

On Sun, 17 Jan 2010 09:55:35 -0500, Albie wrote:
I'm still not getting the practical answer I'm looking for. What
actually is known to work; that I can acquire from NewEgg et al?
Forget about the 4x. That solution is apparently history.

They all work. Pick one based on how long it is likely to last and
use the newegg review ratings to get a clue.

[Richard Crowley]

"Albie" wrote ...
I'm still not getting the practical answer I'm looking for. What
actually is known to work; that I can acquire from NewEgg et al?
Forget about the 4x. That solution is apparently history.

I use whatever drive looks decent at a good price from my local shop.
(www.euninc.com) These have included Pioneer, Sony, LiteOn, LG, Asus, etc.
To be honest I don't really keep track of what brand drive I use. I have
many of them at home and in the office. Note that some of those "brand
names" are just marketing labels and the hardware is OEMed from some
other source. For example there are claims that many "Sony" drives are
OEMed from LiteOn.

HOWEVER, I use exclusively Taiyo-Yuden discs purchased from Super-
MediaStores. At least IME, T-Y is a top-rated, reliable brand who makes
their own discs, and never OEM them from some 3rd party, unknown
source. I use T-Y for both audio and video discs, and have had virtually
zero issues with discs since switching to them (regardless of which driver
burned them). I also buy them exclusively from SuperMediaStores because
T-Y is a popular brand for counterfeiters and SuperMediaStores is a known
good source of T-Y products.

Many of these sources of info are about DVD*R discs, but IMHO the basic
info applies to CD-R discs as well....

http://www.digitalfaq.com/reviews/buy-blank-discs.htm
http://www.supermediastore.com/artic...uides-articles
http://www.supermediastore.com/artic...l-fake-or-real
http://www.supermediastore.com/artic...grade-firmware
http://www.supermediastore.com/article/u/dvd-identifier
http://www.supermediastore.com/artic...-dvd-media-buy

Also, I always make ISO files (vs directly burning discs) and then I use
ImgBurn to do the actual disc writing (both CD & DVD). ImgBurn
(free) provides ever so much more and better information about the
disc burn than any other software I've ever used. It will tell you exactly
what is happening, how fast it is burning, what brand/model disc you
are using, etc. etc. I can't recommend it highly enough.

http://www.imgburn.com/ (did I mention it is FREE?)

Bottom line, IMHO, the brand of drive is probably the LEAST important.
Much more important IME is the disc and the burning software. YMMV.

[Mr.T]

"Richard Crowley" wrote in message
...
Bottom line, IMHO, the brand of drive is probably the LEAST important.
Much more important IME is the disc and the burning software. YMMV.

Yep sure does. I get many bad burns with my Lite-On drive using *any*
disk/software combination. I get very few bad burns with my Pioneer even
using cheaper disks, and none using T-Y or Verbatim. My Samsung drive lies
somewhere in between. It's quite possible that different drives from those
same manufacturers might give different results as well.
So IME the actual drive AND disk are both very important (not just the
brand) but most software these days will write the same data to the drives
buffer, and so has the least effect on quality of burn (in fact should be
none at all if it is properly written, and most are these days it seems)
Ease of use and any information provided by the software is a separate issue
of course.

The bottom line for me is simply to buy a drive, thoroughly test it, and if
it doesn't produce good results, buy a different one. They are cheap enough
these days not to use a known bad drive, or buy dozens of brands of disks in
the hope of finding one it will like. Unfortunately I did that with the
Lite-On. What a waste of time and money that was!
(DVD drives were a lot more expensive back then though)

MrT.