Plextor America Announces 24/10/40 CD-RW

[Wombat]

On my computer I have started burns and then launched CounterStrike. I wouldn't even think of doing it without BURN-proof.

[Paulr]

Without a BURNProof drive, I can burn at 16x and do a whole CD (Lets be honest, most CD writes you do don't fill an entire CD) in around 6 minutes.
That means, start the burn, go grab a coffee, by the time I'm back the CD is either finished or very close to finishing.

WIth BURNProof you start the write and then launch a game.
As the game starts taking up system resources (we all know games take up more system resources than most professional applications) the 16x BURNProof write you started starts to slow down, if the buffer gets into serious trouble the write may even stop until there are enough resources available again to continue the write.
During that time both the CD creation software and the game in question can and will fight for system resources - a drop in performance to both game and CD write.
Why not simply start your 16x CD write, grab a coffee and by the time your back job complete?

On a side note, whilst I write at 16x I usually spend the time sorting out the machine, cleaning out unwanted files, moving some around, undeleting programs etc - never once has this caused the Yamaha any problems.

[Liquid Snake]

I have a Plextor 8/4/32, and I can burn at 8x while doing other things. Of course, I can't play any games, but I can surf the web, use ICQ and use Winamp without affecting the burn. My machine isn't that fast either (P3-750, 384MB RAM, two year old 18GB Quantum drive). *shrug*

[Gurm]

I have a Plextor 12x4x32. If I burn from drive D: I can do just about anything short of playing games while the burn goes on. If I burn from the RAID drive I have to be a little more careful.

My brother has a Yamaha 4x4x16, and he can't do ANYTHING during burns, despite the IBM 7200RPM U100 drive he runs.

- Gurm

[Indiana]

The Yamaha 4416 was one of the worst CD-Writers ever. We have several of them at work and ALL OF THEM had to be replaced (unfortunately by the same model...). A friend of mine has one, too - and it's his third drive in the guarantee-time

I can burn at 12x speed with my TEAC IDE CDRW with no problems (and without the help of burn-proof) even when doing things like Flasking DVDs in the background, having a WinTV window open and surfing the Web at the same time.
The only time when I had problems was when I accidently installed the VIA busmaster driver for Win2k - I was not able to successfully burn one single CD - not even with BurnProof... So never ever install those evil VIA busmaster drivers, they're one of the worst pieces of software ever written. Just use the Windows standard Dual channel IDE and you'll be fine.

[isochar]

I had a 4416, which failed after about 9 months/750 CD written. My experience was good with it, so I purchased a 8424. (Which just failed last week after 11 months )

[Indiana]

Get a Plextor or a TEAC this time. I don't think you will get them to fail in such a short time (even with >700 CDs burned)...

[isochar]

Actually, plextors are rumoured to have become piss-poor in quality. (Ever since they transitioned most of their manufacturing to China)

[Paulr]

That would be right, make a product everyone loves and wants and then go and out-source all the parts so the whole thing falls apart in a few weeks.

Roll on the Pioneer DVD-RW unit in SCSI flavour, now I've never had a single problem with Pioneer products - quality kit.
Come on Pioneer, if you can get me a SCSI version by the end of August you've got yourself a sale!

[Wombat]

Actually, I'm having problems with my Pioneer, and other people on these forums have too. If you don't believe it, search the forums.

[Technoid]

Originally posted by isochar

Technoid,

That Samsung must be a SCSI drive. I definately know that a ~2 year old IDE drive would not be able to sustain what you just said. (at least 2mb/sec needed to burn the two burners, plus the random pagefile seek times, plus all the random seeks from the network traffic) A modern 7200rpm IDE drive would probably create some coasters with that kind of load.

The HDD is a 40GB Samsung 5400RPM with 512KB cache.

That drive is never defraged I always forget!

The speed setting is actualy on 6x, we burned a smal serier of CD's today and that was the setting it was on then.



I Did burn a batch in 10X and did'nt get any complaining from Nero and the customer has'nt said anything about coasters...

But that machine has been a coaster toaster once:

That was when it contained a Gigabyte BX mobo and a Cellermine 600!

The problem then was the low FSB, and a P3 was more expensive than changing to a new mobo, a Duron800, 128MB PC133!

No problems since then....

[cbman]

I have my sweet 4x4x24 Mitsumi Burner (4804-TE)

Only made two coasters since I got it last august. (One I had left a CD burning and went out for a few minutes and when I came back something had happened and it had spit out the drive (I think what had happened was I had just got my new shiny CUSL2 installed and had put on WinME for the first time and I had STR enabled and somehow the computer tried to STR while burning the CD)

The second was when I had the burner and the regular CD Drive hooked up to the same IDE channel and my cat hit the drive eject button on the regular CD-Rom which of course just had the Sims Living large CD in it (and silly me) had left auto-run enabled because the wife wants it on.. so it starts up the Sims and hogs the IDE bus and coastered my CD..

Other than that... Now that the burner is on its own IDE I haven't had any problems since and I have played counterstike and Baldurs Gate and a few other games while burning Music CDs with no difficulties (except the occasional poping noise every 5 or so CD's)

On the Other hand ... the other day my CD-Burner Stopped working (It would open and close and spin up but wouldn't recognize that a disc was in there) so I just did the manly thing and removed all the Warrenty Void If Removed Stickers and took the drive all apart on the kitchen table... poked and prodded all the pieces... checked the cables... smelt the circuit boards... moved the laser housing on the track... spun the motor a few times... put it back together and then put it back in the computer... and I haven't had a problem with it since...