new burner

[Guest]

Have read thru the last 25 - 30 pages of posts and seems the plextor is the burner of choice. Buying new burner and would appreciate some advice. Currently have 3 home computers and would like to be able to do full hard drive back-ups so am considering an external burner but the price seems about double an internal.

Had an HP 8110i originally (on my first puter) and was disappointed in it all around. Never could get it to do a successful back-up using HPs recovery program. Made quite a few coasters. Had trouble with having Direct CD and Nero installed at the same time. Finally uninstalled Direct CD and switched to CDRwin which worked very well for audio and data CDs.

Price is a more important consideration than speed as it makes no difference to me to be able to burn a CD a few minutes faster. Integrity of the data is very important.

My kids burn all the time, audio CDs, copying games for back-up (sure)so I want a reliable, friendly burner and software that records R and RW media at the best price.

I would get an internal burner if I can figure out how to back-up the other 2 puters, ideally using incremental back-up.

Not expecting any hardware compatability problems but for the record, the 3 puters are

Old Nec Pentium 100
Win 98
2 gig and 6 gig Seagate HDD

Dell Dimension L800
P3 800
Sound Blaster Live Value
10 G HDD
Win ME

AMD® Athlon Thunderbird 1.33C GHz processor 266MHz FSB Cooler Master heatsink & fan
256MB Micron PC133 133MHz SDRAM
MSI K7T TURBO ATX mainboard
UDMA-100 support
Hitachi 12x int EIDE DVD ROM
Maxtor 40GB 7200RPM Ultra ATA-100 int EIDE HD
Samsung 1.44MB 3.5" int drive
GeForce 2 MX-400 32MB AGP
integrated AC97 sound
D-Link 530TX 10/100 PCI network card
300 Watt ATX power supply
Win 98

guess which one Dad gets to use?

So I appreciate that these questions get asked all the time but if you want to express an opinion I'd be happy to read it. Sorry for the long post. Also, what is this burnproof or justlink? thing that I keep seeing?

 

[upec]

I will suggest an 12x Plextor it is the lowest speed that have burn proof.

 

[ejsmith2]

The new 24x Plex is good to go @ $205. It's $65 more than the Liteon, but it's top-o-the-line. The Liteon does 1:1 SD2 as well, but won't overburn. If cash is a factor, and you're willing to sacrifice OB and a noticable amount of DAE speed, the Liteon is the nearest competitor.

Burnproof is a 'new' feature that lets you play Unreal Tourney while you're burning a Cd. 4 years ago, that was a no-no, unless it was a friday night and you didn't have anything to set your beer on. In practice, it's useful if you are backing up data files. Audio will have a slight 'crackle' where the burnproof kicks in, but if you're not listening to classical, you'll never notice. If you are backing up a protected cd, burnproof is worthless.

<font color=blue>I hacked Msft, and all I got was this lousy source code.....</font color=blue>

 

[forgettythatty]

I suggest a (best dvd drive) ltd-163 for reading $50, and the aopen AOpen CRW1632 for burning. That set is awesome for everything, but burning SafeDisc2 protected games, in which you should use like insector and then it will work. Get this type of cdr http://www.fujifilmmediasource.com/cdr.asp because it is the best.

If you want a burner that can burn SD2 your only choice is the new liteon or plextor 24x burner, but they are way to expensive right now and they're firmware isn't very good.

 

[lhgpoobaa]

me got a ricoh 12x.

its cheap and nice & still fast.

nuff said.

I'll respect your comments & opinions, even if i disagree with them, Provided you display maturity.

 

[Arbee]

Plextor is the top quality brand - not only it is fast, realiable and feature rich as it has a good suport (Plextor upgrades their burners firmwares in order improve the products even further) as it is, in my experience, very media tolerant (as an example my 12/10/32A Plextor burns without a fault in media that my previous Yamaha CDRW refused).
The only downside is that it is more expensive than other brands, but todays recorders are quite cheap.


How terrible is wisdom when it brings no profit to the wise

 

[Arbee]

I *think* that the latest versions of burnproof (or justlink) have gaps too small to notice even when listening to classical music (under 1 micron, compared to the 40 or so in the first version).


How terrible is wisdom when it brings no profit to the wise