Buying a new DVD-ROM drive

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

Hi guys

I think it's about time I bought a new DVD-ROM drive for my PC. I bought a Sony DVD RW AW-G107A a few days ago which to all intents and purposes is working fine, so I thought I'd compliment it with a new DVD-ROM and would really appreciate your input

I currently have a Pioneer DVD-ROM DVD 115 which is over 5 years old now (and is being a bit selective about the discs it is reading). I've just been shopping around and have been amazed at how cheap new drives are (about 10-17 quid). Does anyone have any reccomendations for makes and/or models? If these things are cheap, great, but I'd much rather pay more and get good quality.

Thanks

 

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

you can get a dual layer RW for 19 quid, just buy another of them
most brands are good but im especially fond of Asus and LiteOn

 

Bloody hellfire, really? I bought my Sony for 35 jib in a sale, dual layer though mind.

Saying that though, I tried to make the DVD-RW my master drive and it kept crashing my Power DVD. I assume it was because it was trying to detect my old drive so when I clicked on Configure it froze, hence why I thought get a DVD-ROM only with no added flash bits

 

wouldnt it be easier to reinstall PDVD? :P

 

Cheers guys!!!!

I was going for the ROM option as I thought I may as well save a few quid, I have no need for two RWs

To all intents and purposes, my PowerDVD worked fine, I should have changed it to my other drive first before removing the master one, then switch it back, but my main drive is getting cranky, failing to read some discs and that. Plus, I'm also suffering from that malady where autodetect and Autorun fail to work and am curious to see if a new drive will fix it. I've tried every solution I can think of and looking through the forum, I think a lot of other people have too and are giving up on it

 

Have ya looked at updating the firmware on the drive, that sometimes corrects read issues with newer discs etc. Althought the drive could simply be on its way out. I would agree with Phoenix on the liteon recommendation aswell. They were the only drives we used to use for testing CD/DVD's, very reliable, and cheap aswell.

 

How true! There is always firmware being released for media drives. Worth a look.

I have received drives which are new models and are shipped with old(er) firmware.

Si

 

Is firmware specific to a drive or is there generic XP ones? By the looks of things no one is doing any for my old Pioneer drive and my new Sony one didn;t come with any drivers etc at all.

Thanks

 

Firmware is always specific to a drive, as using the wrong firmware can turn the drive into junk. Think of it as being similar to flashing a motherboard.

AFAIK there are never specific drivers for CD/DVD drives, the generic Windows ones are always used. The only time specifics raise their heads is for writing CDs/DVDs. Each drive usualy has some specific rules for this, but those are nearly always incorporated into the burning software.

Harry.

 

Totally correct, i have a NEC laptop DVD-RW drive, and they released a new model that was DL. It turned out to be the same as my older drive, but with new firmware added. So i changed the firmware and got a DL drive. Always worth checking out.

 

My Asus DVD 16x lived 2.5 years T.T

 

I'm currently using a Plextor DVD burner. Couldn't be happier. Very high quality at an affordable price.