DVD drives sold at Wallmart

[shadow]

Re: DVD drives sold at Wallmart

You can try downloading Hiren's boot CD and boot Mini XP straight from the CD.

[i4004]

Re: DVD drives sold at Wallmart

or ubcd4win
but it's slow...

[stevo1210]

Re: DVD drives sold at Wallmart

Pioneer?

That's my choice here. All my DVD burners are made by Pioneer... they are the only ones I trust. I do however have one LG drive, but that was a freebie.

[370forlife]

Re: DVD drives sold at Wallmart

Older lite-on's seem to be pretty good. I have a old 48x one from a hp vectra vl-600 that I always use if the cd drive in a computer cannot read my scratched copy of xp. Always reads it no problem.

But I have to say Hitachi drives are probably the best I have used. They just have a feeling of being heavy and strong. I have a old one from a dell XPS 500 thats a cd/dvd drive that I always use if a computer cannot read a dvd, also have a old compaq presario Hitachi drive, same thing.

[ratdude747]

Re: DVD drives sold at Wallmart

for that i can use one of my dell giveaway boxes long enough to do the fix.

[linuxguru]

Re: DVD drives sold at Wallmart

Hitachi is fine, except for clutch and eject problems after aging for 8-10 years. Older LGs are fine, but I have one recent Hitachi-LG unit (~13 months old) that is recognized fine but fails to read. Samsung is notorious for eject problems. Liteons used to experience premature failure of the write Laser diodes, which would turn them into plain old CD-ROM drives.

For the moment, I'm sticking with Hitachi-LG until something better comes along.

[Junk Parts]

Re: DVD drives sold at Wallmart

Years ago I got a non working early home CD player that had been used in and Auto Body Shop.The thing was a beast. Even the disk tray was metal. The frame as well as the shields inside were all made of copper. Unlike today were the unit will have one or at the most two boards in it this thing was stuffed. Had real solid walnut case too. I spent some time checking the connector cables on the boards, and blowing out a few pounds of body shop flour with the compressor. I blew out the laser and tray area with the spray can duster stuff. I had no expectation that this unit would ever work again but I plugged it and gave it a try anyway. It powered right up so I put a CD in and the beast started playing its ass off. It sounded great too. We used it for years with no problems at all. We bought a nice oak wall unit but the beast wouldn't fit in it, so I gave it to my Son. Its not working again now but he is going to have it repaired. I think it needs its caps looked after and the tracking adjusted, and it will be up and running again. My friend Mike who is a great componet level Tech can fix it. I just have to find him. With all that being said, I want a PC DVD burner that is built as tough and as well as this old Home CD player.

[c_hegge]

Re: DVD drives sold at Wallmart

I don't like Lite-On. I've hardly seen/used any personally, but others have said they're no good. Samsung and Pioneer have been reliable for me. Have'nt had too many problems with LG either (although I haven't used very many of them).

[mockingbird]

Re: DVD drives sold at Wallmart

Lite-ON drives...

Well the older ones were build like tanks. The 52x24x32 CDRW model has a design flaw where the drive will not spin all the way and you are stuck at 12x burning.

Their newer drives... When they work, they work rather well. Lite-ON has been using Mediatek chipsets for who knows how long and those chipsets when exploited with the right firmwares always give the best performance.

I use a Lite On SHW-160P6S from a computer someone dumped, it's a later gen model 16x DVDRW. The tray doesn't always open but that doesn't bother me. I also have a Sony DRU-800A I think which is a Lite-ON clone and it works great.

The reason why I hate LG drives is because:
1) The older CDRW/DVD combo drives always had terrible disc compatibility problems (Models 8201/8202)
2) Even on the newest LG drives, you still cannot change the booktype. This is unforgivable.

Other than that I've seen the newest 22x LG in action and it seems to work pretty well, I didn't check booktype capability though.

I always take Lite-ON drives when I'm given the choice. Their SATA line looks very flimsy and cheap though, I can't recommend those.

I also keep an old Plextor Premium drive in my computer simply because it's the best CDRW ever made, and the only CDRW which can defeat a later Securom revision protection. I took two of them from a shipment of HP Vectra Workstations that I set up for a school a while back.

I miss my old Toshiba though. I used to have a Toshiba SD-M1212 DVD-Rom that would read any disc you put into it. The Toshiba drives also had the best FES speeds of any drives back in the day.

[Junk Parts]

Re: DVD drives sold at Wallmart

I was very happy with all my quick but noisy Sony/LiteOn DRU 800A drivers. They worked fine and quickly until near the day they went south. Sony had a good Rep at the time from their "real" Sony burners and thats why I bought the DRU 800A. The thing cost $79.99 too! The unit always burnt at 16x and if you wanted it to go slower you had to lock it down in the software before the burn. I was pissed when I found out that the Sony DRU 800A was a rebadged LiteOn drive. All of them failed the same way. First they would have problems reading CD or DVD disks. Next they would fail 7 times out of 10 on a DVD burn. I think the same environmental factor killed all these Sony drives. It called cigarette smoke.
Now my new LG drive makes almost no noise at all, and seems quick. What I need now are a few 22x blanks just to see if it can do it that fast. In normal life all I need is 8 to 16x disks. I burn at 16x on most projects but if the burns start to go funky or I'm copying data I go much slower. Today I may even read the owners manual for the drive...LOL Time will tell if "Life's Good"! One good thing is that the LG software has an automatic firmware update feature. I have not burnt any DVD's since I let it do this update so I don't know if the drive still works now...LOL The update was painless.
Right now I have printer paper taped tightly to the front of the PC to keep the cigarette smoke/dust out of the new drive. Next week I'll add two fans to the back of the case. The plastic duct will find its way to my junk box. A different cpu heat sink and fan will be fitted or a fan will be afixed directly to the heat sink thats already there. I have a PIII Dell set up this way but using only one rear case fan, and it blows air out of every crack in the case as well out of the PSU in good amounts. When the PIII gets dirty all the crap is on the rear of the PC. Thats the way I want this one to be too.

[mockingbird]

Re: DVD drives sold at Wallmart

LOL Time will tell if "Life's Good"!

This is a common misconception. LG actually stands for Lucky GoldStar. Goldstar used to be an old Japanese or Taiwanese or Korean manufacturer, I remember their monochrome CRTs from way back.

I usually look for the RCP1 firmware if it's available, otherwise I go to the MFG site.

Regarding the Lite-ON failures due to the cigarette smoke, you should have opened the thing up and cleaned it. I rescued an old BENQ DVDRW this way, Well the truth is I don't even know if it was defective, but I like to clean drives that look dusty on the outside.

It replaced a piece of junk LG 8201B CD/DVD that I had in a USB enclosure that kept spitting out coasters.

[Junk Parts]

Re: DVD drives sold at Wallmart

Well I just did a test burn of eight crazy nights and the copy is perfect. This was on a Sony 16x DVD-R blank. I do have trashed blanks mixed in with the good ones from messing with the failing DRU 800A.

[weirdlookinguy]

Re: DVD drives sold at Wallmart

LG - Lucky GoldStar - Founded 1947, South Korea.

Lucky used to be their name for household goods, GoldStar their name for electronics. In 1995 they changed their name to "LG" for "Lucky GoldStar". The "Lifes Good" bullshit is just a lame backronym they came up with not too long ago.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Group

[Junk Parts]

Re: DVD drives sold at Wallmart

Well in the past I don't think Goldstar had such a good rep. These drives were the ones found in cheap PC's like Packard Bell, and others. Its easy for a Brand Name to go down in quality, and people will keep buying it on it's past reputation. Plextor is a good example of this. I'm not saying that the new Plextors are total trash, but why not buy the same drive with a different face on it in the liteOn brand for less money? Now if you have a known bad reputation "Gold Star"? Its harder for you to make headway in the market even if your product is now much better than it used to be. I just woke up, and I'm not "thinking" yet but the example that comes to mind here is Hyundai Motor Cars. I had a Hyundai Excel. It was a total turd! With good maintainence, and being run easy it still took three engines to make 96,000 miles. Now the Hyundai's are much better cars today, or so I'm told. Because of my past experiences with the first one I'll never buy the second one even if its much better than the first. Going up market with your product can bite you too. The Honda Civic used to be and inexpensive little beater with few options offered. If you got one of these with a stick shift, and kept it maintained it would run forever. Now they are big and fancy. The automatic transmissions in 95% of the newer ones are junk. To us older buyers who remember the Civic as it should be just walk by these dogs on the new or used car lots. Well I have three jobs for the Lucky Goldstar to run today...This will be a total of seven burns for it. "Captains Log: Star Date 2009".... Happy New Years!

[weirdlookinguy]

Re: DVD drives sold at Wallmart

Indeed. Why are cars so huge these days? They look hollow to me.

[Junk Parts]

Re: DVD drives sold at Wallmart

The cars of today are not "Hollow" at all. They are full of U.S. Government Shit hauled straight out of Washington D.C.

[kaniki]

Re: DVD drives sold at Wallmart

As for the sony drives, i believe that i heard that sony started outsourcing their CD or DVD ROMs something like 5 or more years ago.. can not remember now, but i do know that ever since then, i have heard of quiet a few of their roms were not of good quality. They were starting up the production of something else at the time and wanted to put more of its attention on that new product.. just with i could remember more details..

As for lite-on, I agree that they used to have good quality products (over 10 years ago), that lasted for years, but do not trust them these days.. The last one i purchased of theirs, i talked to a computer store about a new ROM for a system that i was building.. They said "These are the best and you will not have any problems with them" or something like that so i bought one.. a year later it died.. Seems kinda funny, my old 8x4x32 sony burner still runs after years of torture and abuse that i put it through, but a lightly used Lite-on could not last more then a year..

I just replaced a 48x ltn-486 lite-on ROM in a computer that died years ago. I reinstalled the computer about a year and a half ago and was told it had been dead for a long time at that point.. Pretty sad, it could not even last for years in a nursing home environment.. and it gets more use installing programs and small games then anything so very little use.. all i can say is man i miss the old sony's..

[Junk Parts]

Re: DVD drives sold at Wallmart

Kaniki my second drive is also and older Sony CRX-320E. This unit is a CD-RW- DVD-ROM. The first thing I did was a firmware update. It writes CD's just fine, and plays DVD's perfectly as well. I wish it could burn DVD's too. When cleaning it up for use I had it all apart, and found it to be very well made. It has no relationship to my newer Sony DRU800A/LiteOn drive I have at all. Can a DVD-ROM be made into a DVD burner with the right "after market" firmware patch??? I wonder....

[Wizard]

Re: DVD drives sold at Wallmart

Why need to redo the firmware, Ratdude747?

Cheers, Wizard

[stj]

Re: DVD drives sold at Wallmart

some dvd chipsets can be flashed from Linux, check the utils at rpc1.org

the best drives now (now that pioneer have dropped out) are nec(now optiarc) and pioneer.

other drives like lite-on/benq etc vary a lot - some people have good luck and others dont.