Cruddy DVD drive, data overload
Jun. 17th, 2005 10:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
johnridleyJust before I left for Duckon last week, my DVD-R drive died. I've been mostly[1] without a burner now for just 3 or 4 days, and my hard drives are filling up. Between recording History Channel shows and downloading BBC documentaries, the bytes pile up fast. And I've been cutting back!
Luckily the FedEx guy brought me gifts today.
The first was a new burner, the other a couple of spindles of DVDs.
The dead drive is Memorex True-8X; when I bought it I got a relabelled Pioneer. It packed up at about 8 months, they replaced it with a relabelled NEC. Now that's dead at 13.5 months (1 year warranty :^<).
So I hit Newegg's site Tuesday night when I realized the drive was not "just resting", and ordered a Lite-On 16X "does everything" recorder - CD/DVD +/-, R/W, DL. It's gotten very good reviews. $53 including fedex shipping. I guess if they're that cheap, I won't gripe TOO much about having to buy a new one every year or two. The last one cost $150, the one before that $320.
Lite-On drives have the reputation of being able to read messed-up discs; maybe I'll be able to remove the "magic drive" from my system now (the el-cheapo Comp-USA branded DVD-ROM reader which inexplicably seems to be able to read discs that higher-end units shun).
The Sony, which was my original recorder some 4+ years ago, continues to run, though I don't really trust it. I put it in![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jennlk's machine so she can burn audio CDs out of iTunes; it works fine for that, but it gets weird with DVDs.
I'm guessing I burn on the order of 500 DVDs a year (a pretty big percentage of which is duplicating TV show archives for friends). Way above average, I'll admit, but certainly not commercial quantity; I've seen posts from people who burn 2000+ a year and use the same drive for a couple of years. Are these things designed assuming people just won't burn that much? Maybe just bad luck for me.
[1] - I do have a DVD recorder in the laptop, but burning over the network is slow (hmm,gigahertz ethernet is cheap now...) and burning between two machines is just inconvenient and time-consuming.
Luckily the FedEx guy brought me gifts today.
The first was a new burner, the other a couple of spindles of DVDs.
The dead drive is Memorex True-8X; when I bought it I got a relabelled Pioneer. It packed up at about 8 months, they replaced it with a relabelled NEC. Now that's dead at 13.5 months (1 year warranty :^<).
So I hit Newegg's site Tuesday night when I realized the drive was not "just resting", and ordered a Lite-On 16X "does everything" recorder - CD/DVD +/-, R/W, DL. It's gotten very good reviews. $53 including fedex shipping. I guess if they're that cheap, I won't gripe TOO much about having to buy a new one every year or two. The last one cost $150, the one before that $320.
Lite-On drives have the reputation of being able to read messed-up discs; maybe I'll be able to remove the "magic drive" from my system now (the el-cheapo Comp-USA branded DVD-ROM reader which inexplicably seems to be able to read discs that higher-end units shun).
The Sony, which was my original recorder some 4+ years ago, continues to run, though I don't really trust it. I put it in
jennlk's machine so she can burn audio CDs out of iTunes; it works fine for that, but it gets weird with DVDs.I'm guessing I burn on the order of 500 DVDs a year (a pretty big percentage of which is duplicating TV show archives for friends). Way above average, I'll admit, but certainly not commercial quantity; I've seen posts from people who burn 2000+ a year and use the same drive for a couple of years. Are these things designed assuming people just won't burn that much? Maybe just bad luck for me.
[1] - I do have a DVD recorder in the laptop, but burning over the network is slow (hmm,gigahertz ethernet is cheap now...) and burning between two machines is just inconvenient and time-consuming.
