CD-R/RW Recomendations
 

Can some one recomend a good CD-R/RW external drive for me? We can't get an internal one because we don't have the bays for it and we have four pc's

The most used machine is this

PII 266mhz
96mb Ram at 60mhz
400mb free hard drive space :) (you see why we need a burner)
USB is all good

Don't say buy a new computer
What External CD Burner should I get? From what I hear at CNet they all suck.

my older brother has one by iomega
i think it's "predator", or something like htat

he had a few snafus at first, but got it all figured out w/in a day, and now it's great, or so he says

and it's capable of being upgraded to firewire, if you ever get that capability on your comp.

i had an iomega drive and it sucked. lets stay away from them...

oh, sorry, man

The Lite-On 12x10x32 BurnProof.
A decent not pricy CD-writer.

You should consider increasing your options with a Firewire PCI adapter first.

Try the Lab reports here www.pcpro.co.uk

UJ

I have the TDK veloCD (prononced "velocity") 16/10/40x (also known as the 16/10/40 X-Drive). I paid $140 (at Cosco when it just came out, Circuit City has it priced at $240). But the somewhat new 24/10/40x drive from TDK is $142 at Circuit City! So, the TDK drive is the best I have had, and it is nice looking too.

-Duane

VeloCD > You

I also have a lite-on writer and it's great! It's an internal one though...

i got a philips cdrw1200, and it does the job perfectly. it's internal though, so that's a problem.

i have an hp burner, internal though, but i would recommend an hp if they make external drives

I woke up at 8:30 this morning thinking it was 9:30 (bloody CST!) because I thought I heard the door bell ring and that my Philips CD r/w 12/10/32 was here then got an e-mmail at 10 saying that the order had just gone through :mad:. I orderd it on Thursdayy for gods sake!

I think the best type to get is some sort of Phillips. At least thats what I'm aiming for. Right now I have a crappy Acer CD writer and when I burn audio CDs and play them they always skip on every stereo or Discman. It might be the shitty CD's i use, the burner itsself, or a combination of the two

Considering the computer's a relic, you won't benefit from a high-speed-capable burner because your computer won't be able to do the job.

So I would recommend the HP 8200e, if you can find one anywhere. It's at least a year and a half old...

is the veloCD TDK drive internal? speed wise it sounds internal and i cant use that. I can if i convince my dad but i kinda want to use it on my laptop too. screw it Internal drives are good ill just get a zip disk 250 for my laptop.

veloCD sounds good. HP makes external but everyone at CNet hates it as much as they hate my old Iomgea purple ZipCD

I have an external one and am VERY happy with it.

It is purple, and is iomega zip cd 650. I bought it about a year ago, and have not had any problems. It burns music smoothly, and data well. It is not the fastest thing out there, but hey, it does the job! <takes about 20 minutes for a full cd>

I highly recommend it. Warning: the tech support for it sucks. When I first got it, I called tech support because the software only recognized .wav files. I called them to see what I could do about this, and how I could burn mp3's. They had no clue. Then a friend told me about winamp. Maybe that wasn't such a bad thing :). I would never have ended up here.

For blank cdr's I use Office Depot brand. I have used more expensive kinds, but for the money, the quality is excellent.

~ Missy

missy i have the same one you do and after two weeks of burning it craps out on me!

want to trade?

You must have gotten a bad one. I would return it. I am so happy with mine. It has burned well over 400 cd's for me, and it keeps on burning! Return it!

Good Luck hon,

~ Missy

i spent too much time tryin to fix it and the warrenty ran out :(

I would still try to return it. I guess I am cheap.

~ Missy

screw that my dad is buying a new one so ill just get it. the universe seems to work that way.

Don't forget about plextors. My plexwriter 12/10/32A is mad. You could get the external version which is sweet.

I bought Sony CRX160E CD-RW (12x/8x/32x) about a month ago. Burns CD's very fast, full CD takes only about 6 min. Burn quality seems good, read quality is also excellent. Internal drive but why you have to buy external? External drives cost more and you have to remember that USB is much slower interface than IDE.

I have a laptop and bought the Sony Spressa USB (CRX___ - iforget,prolly discontinued.) Its about 2 years old now and it runs like a champ. Just this last week i burnt 10 data cds and average at least 2-3 a month for the last 2 years and it hasn't giving my any problems.

Audio and data cds are wicked. CDTEXT for audio cds is kickass. I like it so much i bought a Sony CDRW for a friends desktop and it runs smoothly and like a champ.

Sony packages its own software and its very good. But, you can still use the other programs, Nero, Roxio, CDRWIN and everything else.

It truly is a kick ass drive. I've used it on my friends desktop and it had zero problems. The only problem it had was with a Dell. I never did figure out why, but that's ok with me.

Plextor
 

Last month I got a internal Plextor 16/10/40 IDE drive. Works 100%, really awesome drive. I've burned over 100 cd's now and not one has turned into a coaster, thanks to BURN-PROOF technology built into the drive. And best of all at the Plextor site they do frequent firmware upgrades to thier latest drives (which is good) software is good as well but I prefer using NERO for my burning needs.

One other thing I finally like is that at the Plextor site they even give you a detailed list of software and media which works best with thier drives. :D

Colldawg21, you mentioned it's likely the crappy cd's you use? Im curious what brand you ARE using lol. If anything stick to the BETTER name brans like Kodak, Verbatim, and Fuji. I've used Kodak Gold CD-R's, quite nice, and thier latest Gold+Silver CD-R's are just as sweet.

Whiteflip, if you absolutely can't replace your current cd drive with a Plextor internal burner, then there's always this Plextor USB 8/8/24 external drive here

http://www.plextor.com/english/products/8_8_24u.html:D

Plextor is great... but is ultra expensive. There are a lot of other brands with burn proof technology too (i think all new writers are burnproof nowadays).

My cheap Lite-on burner hasn't made any error yet (i think i've made about 60 cds) and it was about half as expesive as a Plextor with same write speed.

Re: Plextor
 

Still wouln't burn at 8x speed. That's for USB 2.0. And i don't people actually have usb 2.0.

You'll just end up burning at 4x speed.

allright plexor is kinda pricy but ill check it out
and veloCD from TDK seems ultra spiffy and nice so ill check them out
and this cheap ass HP CD RW DVD combo that has high user opinion ill check that out

allright good stuff thanks guys. (im going internal my dad is too cheap for external and i don't really wanna pay any of my own personal money so like screw it)