What is up with optical drives these days?

IceBurner

How does one currently find out what can rip and burn exceptionally well and isn't likely to fall apart? Is there even a rule of thumb to go by, like with HDDs? (Seagate currently bad, WD currently awesome except for that one turd model). Is the choice even important any more, or hav we reached the point where there is only universal garbage being churned out as the medium obsoletes?

Plextor stopped making their own stuff in 2007 and I've noticed it's difficult to get clear answers on which drive(s) seem to be ahead of the pack.

I know optical drives are less and less relevant, but I still need one at least for much of my PC game collection, to burn expendable copies of CD for travel, and it's also handy as a cheap backup device. Quality of rips and burns is important, but I'm not really finding answers on that as easily as I used to.

Help?

GrimReaper

Um, anything? Seriously, cd writers are all perfectly fine these days. If you want quality of rips then your best bet is getting a decent pack of CD-R's more than anything else. Are you talking about CD's for computer stuff or CD's for music stuff?

If for computer stuff i'd just go the route of using DVD-R's, that way you can get more stored.

PeregrineFalcon

Yeah, it's not like in the olden days when you had to look for certain models that supported feature X or Y (subchannel data, anyone?) in order to rip certain music CDs or whatever.

Reboot

I've learnt the hard way that CD-ROM is a lot more reliable than DVDs when it comes to storage. Unless the content it too big, CD is a more reliable choice.

My own experience agrees with Peregrine's.

Daedalus

We're getting pretty close to the point where you can just about get away without having one at all.

Fats

Yeah, my poor drive sits and gathers dust. Even Windows was installed off a USB stick.

Azio

GrimReaper wrote: »

Um, anything? Seriously, cd writers are all perfectly fine these days.

This is not really true. DVD drives nowadays are made as cheaply as possible, so don't expect your $30 Lite-On to last more than a couple years

Personally I only ever use it to burn Windows DVDs, everything else just sits on my hard drives

ArcSyn

What about Blu-Ray burners? They seem to be where CD/DVD burners were at when they were new and there's different features/speeds you may want to look out for?

BioHaz594

I miss my kenwood 72x CDROM drive.

Azio

ArcSyn wrote: »

What about Blu-Ray burners?

Gigantic waste of money.

Azio

Seriously if you need to store a ton of data, a plain old magnetic hard drive will give you the most gigs for the money, it'll last a long time, and it'll get the job done a hell of a lot quicker than any optical storage.

xzzy

Except hard drives are prone to mechanical failures.

Yes a plastic disc has some physical weaknesses as well, but it's a much more reliable long term storage solution.

That said, the cd/dvd drives themselves seem to have become ridiculously shoddy the past few years. I feel lucky to have one last two years. It's good they only cost twenty bucks because I'd be pissed if I was paying more.

travathian

Azio wrote: »

GrimReaper wrote: »

Um, anything? Seriously, cd writers are all perfectly fine these days.

This is not really true. DVD drives nowadays are made as cheaply as possible, so don't expect your $30 Lite-On to last more than a couple years

I love it when people claim this. So you are claiming that companies purposely wasted money by spending more on manufacturing in the past, then they do now? Having worked for an OEM I can confidently call bullshit. Manufacturers are constantly looking for efficiency and cost cutting measures. I have a 5 year old lite-on cdrw that still works fine, and a dvdrw I just bought 6 months ago. That $30 dvdrw has burned 480 dvds so far and still works fine.

Azio

Now that I think about it, I've never owned a DVD burner that lasted more than 3 or 4 years. Even the first one, which cost like $200 started producing coasters after a while.

I barely ever use it anymore so I wouldn't be surprised if the next one I buy ends up being the last

xzzy wrote: »

Except hard drives are prone to mechanical failures.

Not if you store it

Stormwatcher

the only remotely trustworthy media is microfiche anyway. start printing those 1's and 0's, son.

GrimReaper

Stormwatcher wrote: »

the only remotely trustworthy media is microfiche anyway. start printing those 1's and 0's, son.

Pfft, and what happens when there's a fire. A chisel and stone is much more trustworthy media.

Stormwatcher

GrimReaper wrote: »

Stormwatcher wrote: »

the only remotely trustworthy media is microfiche anyway. start printing those 1's and 0's, son.

Pfft, and what happens when there's a fire. A chisel and stone is much more trustworthy media.

well, but fires aside, no kind of magnetic or optical disk comes close to microficheing. Ask the newspapers. Future generations are really fucked, they're gonna have no idea about what happened in their past after the hardcopy newspapers die.

We're already fucked concerning older computer backup tapes and floppies.

xzzy

I don't see why that's bad, not like anything has happened recently that's worth keeping records of for eternity.

"who is this sarah palin bitch and what the fuck is modern warfare? why did these people etch this information into a sheet of titanium?"

Stormwatcher

xzzy wrote: »

I don't see why that's bad, not like anything has happened recently that's worth keeping records of for eternity.

"who is this sarah palin bitch and what the fuck is modern warfare? why did these people etch this information into a sheet of titanium?"

hehe
I'm sure Pericles thought the same thing about his administration.

GrimReaper

Welcome to stonebook!

Welcome Caesar, you have a new message on your wall!

Brute: Why are you being such a douche Caesar? I'm telling you, someone's gonna really go at you one of these days. Douche.

Stormwatcher

GrimReaper wrote: »

Welcome to stonebook!

Welcome Caesar, you have a new message on your wall!

Brute: Why are you being such a douche Caesar? I'm telling you, someone's gonna really go at you one of these days. Douche.

The message would actually be written on a real wall too.

GrimReaper

Stormwatcher wrote: »

GrimReaper wrote: »

Welcome to stonebook!

Welcome Caesar, you have a new message on your wall!

Brute: Why are you being such a douche Caesar? I'm telling you, someone's gonna really go at you one of these days. Douche.

The message would actually be written on a real wall too.

That was the aim.. although i'm glad no smart arse has noticed the obvious flaw in my joke. Being that during that period of time forms of writing upon and messages were put on vellum not stone.

Daedalus

Stormwatcher wrote: »

GrimReaper wrote: »

Stormwatcher wrote: »

the only remotely trustworthy media is microfiche anyway. start printing those 1's and 0's, son.

Pfft, and what happens when there's a fire. A chisel and stone is much more trustworthy media.

well, but fires aside, no kind of magnetic or optical disk comes close to microficheing. Ask the newspapers. Future generations are really fucked, they're gonna have no idea about what happened in their past after the hardcopy newspapers die.

We're already fucked concerning older computer backup tapes and floppies.

Any kind of backup requires essentially constant vigilance to stay intact; it's right there in the second law of thermodynamics.

corcorigan

I suspect that any data written recently 'in the cloud' will remain practically forever. The actual physical storage may fail or change, but it'll just be rewritten somewhere else before then. Those embarrassing photos will never go away.

Sifting through everything to find actual useful information may prove more of an issue.