CD burner brand quality
 

So after years of relying on trusty zip disks to get my work done, i'm finaly ready to come to terms with the fact that the rest of the world moved on to CD-R's and i need to catch up.
I trust Sony as a brand as long as it isn't a desktop, in other wordsw i think they make quality components. I've also heard good things about TDK. Both happen to have good rebates availible right now for 52x32x52 cdr drives and i'm going to venture to best buy before monday to find something.

I'm willing to pay for a quailty product that will not need upgrading (i really could care less about speed since i need this for archiving.) for at least 3 years. I don't mind if i get behind on speed when newer drives come out (52 speed is the physical limit of plastic cd's though) as long as it has sufficiant buffer's to prevent coaters and won't kag on me at important moments.

A similar but different post recently educated me in several low quailty- low price brands, but i'm willling to look at high end and am not interested in a lite-on, digital research, etc which can be had for as little as 25.00 but with small buffers and poor long term functionality records.

Given the two brands mentioned (Sony, TDK) what are your thoughts on quality. Is there perhaps another brand you feel is better?

Plextor is the best, its what i own. Hmm you trust sony but not lite on. lite on makes alot of the drives for sony........... I would get a lite on before a TDK.

depending on the amount of data your looking at archiving, you may want to look into DVD burners.

(dvdr's hold 4700 mb vs 700mb cds)

i havent done the math, but i beleive price per meg including intial purchase of hardware is cheaper in favour of the dvd-rw as compared to the cdrws.

just something you may want to look into.

don't write off LiteOn.... they're a major manufacturer, they've been around for years. And their optical drives are extremely reliable and are outstanding performers. Have installed or recommended over 20 such CD-RW and DVD drives by LiteOn. and to echo AxByC, LiteOn does manufacture for a lot of other brand names.

sorry, I realize you said you weren't interested in LiteOn, but they're worth a look. Check them out at newegg, read the reviews on any of their drives.

In response to the lite-on reply's,
My research already showed me that lite-on was a subcontractor for others, however they contain a lower quality motor and smaller cache to cut costs. That isn't to say that it's crap. No, it's a really good drive, but that motor is considered to have a three to five year lifespan.
As rare as someone want's a long term product in a standard shifting world, i want a 5-7 year product, and sony's are just considered lite-on's with a more durable motor and vice-versa.

As for dvd-?, until there is one standard i'm not spending hard earned money. I don't want to end up with a betamax player in three years at 199.00US.

IMO lite on is right behind Plextor as far as quality

I've been very satisfied with my Lite-On LTC-48161H. They're inexpensive, and pretty good. If you want the best, get a Plextor.

I have a Plextor 48x24x48 I got for $99 and I love it. It supports Mt Rainier which would be useful for on the fly archiving.

you could always get a dvd burner that supports dvd+-r/rw and cd rw that way you have no problems with competing formats,, most drives seems to be goin that way these days.

sonys dru-510a is +-RW with CDRW for about 179 i've always liked sonys stuff, but they have poor customer support, it works well til you have to deal with them , i've found.

TDK make a lot of good safe decisions for CD burning, not always the fastest but high reliability.

io/magic -+rw/r with rw for about 169 no idea , but i saw it as i was buying a dvd -+ r/rw cdrw in office depot a few days ago.

That's exactly what i was looking for. Thank you Charliex!
I'm going to assume your saying that TDK has a high reliability rate as a trade off for slower speeds?
That's a fine tradeoff in my book.

Thank you everyone who's responded so far. i'm always looking for more opinions. So far this thread has caused me to put off my purchase until i can look into long term viabilty of these products more.
I'd appreciate any other's who may want to add which companies have impressed them in terms of burners.

*edit*
As a side topic, does MS make anything for Windows 2000 that adds the direct CD function of XP? Any 3rd party apps like Easy cd creator maybe?

I find it funny how people like to just say screw the cheaper brands, in my view, I would rather something that cost $50 cdn that would die in 4 years and just get another one for MUCH cheaper at that time, then one that cost $100 cdn, no faster to begin with and will be obsolete in the same amount of time as the cheapo brand, just my view.
BTW I Have a Liteon, havn't had a problem in 2 years, no costers, and it has all the extras that the high priced ones have (like buffer underrun protection, RAW Sector burning and such) Anyway I say, if it works the same and is cheaper, lifespan can go to hell ;)

I bought a Digital Research drive a few years ago, it's burned every CD-R perfectly. I think I paid about 40 dollars for it when most were in the 100's.

I love my 48x LiteOn. There hasn't been anything I couldn't burn. They're cheap too. For the higher priced burners you're just paying for the name.

Sony is overpriced rubbish (With all their products). As is TDK.

Got a Lite-On 52x Burner... ...2-5 CD's a day for 3 months, not a bad one yet!

-SF

Goddamn you all who hate TDK. I have had my TDK drive .. 24x10x40.. for about 3 years now and have never had any problems! It has outlasted my sony burner and a friends lite-on, and it burns with a fury. 4min for a full cd. Yay!

http://www.stdomain.frag-wire.com/pics/tdk.jpg
Its got the blue deck thingy, how can you resist it!?

Diddo on TDK being a quality product. All of the CD-R drive in my house are TDK's they are outstanding drives that take alot of abuse. They may not be the fastest on the planet but they are built like a volvo!

In terms of spending 199.00 for a betamax player. Check out NECs new DVR-1300A its a Dual Format (+-4x) DVD burner that isn't as fast as the DRU-510A from Sony, But its been getting outstanding reviews, and for $98.00-110.00 i don't see this as a bad choice, since you can still burn normal CD-Rs at 24X!

And to further indorse the NEC, I recently picked up a pair for home backups and love em to death :D

Just wanted to add- I use the Sony DRU-510a DVD burner and am very satisfied with it! I was in the same position and didn't want to get + or - burners until I knew which was going to come out on top as the standard medium.

I ran into this burner and quickly ordered it :) Great product.

i just ordered a liteon for about 40 bucks. only burned on CD so far, but it was about 3 times as fast as my 3 year old Plextor and a solid burn. i need to do more tests, but satisfied so far

Basically any name brand drive. But dont write off no-name drives either--I have a 48x no name burner that I got for $15 or something on sale that I have been using for nearly a year without the first problem. CD Burners have evolved so much that it is getting to the point that any company can make a pretty damn good one--it isnt like it used to be, where you absolutely needed a very nice drive to get good burns.

TDK rocks. They make the best DVD burners.

My current burner is the TDK VeloCD which I LOVE and have yet to make a coaster with, the components seem to be top notch and the pricing was quite fair at the time I got it for around $100 or so. I do not have nor have I ever used a Plextor I just think it is something people all love because a few people have had no problems with them, I have not had any more problems with my TDK than someone who bought a Plextor at the same time so I would have to say I personally would get another TDK while I am sure this person would get another Plextor. Lite-on is also decent drives as far as the SONY being a L-O with a better drive I do not know but it would seem to me SONY wouldn't upgrade the drive in it before putting their name on it to keep costs low on their end.

I'm getting that from Sony whitepapers. their saying their outsourced motors are built to a 5-7 year spec.
Oh well, Tdk seems to be very well recieved.

I work for a fairly large white-box PC OEM. We have recently handled LG, Acer, BenQ, Samsung, Sony, Plextor, Teac, and Lite-On optical drives.

One of our production engineers said that the Sony 52x CDRW drives don't play nice with some of our current Microstar motherboards. We've recently discontinued carrying them.

We had to kick Samsung to the curb when they gave us availability headaches.

Supposedly Plextor are about the best for audio tasks.

Plextor and LG have been very, very good to us and I would recommend these to anyone.

I presently own a SCSI Plextor 8x20 CDR, a 16x10x32 Samsung, an LG 2x DVD-RW, and an older Yamaha SCSI CDRW that I picked up somewhere.
The Plextor gets the most use, as did the IDE Plextor I reluctantly sold a friend.

Side note, check the bundled software. Don't get caught expecting a copy of Nero Burning ROM (excellent)...and getting Nero Express (*gag*).
Ahead seems to be gaining fast on Roxio for market share.

I have just a simple one "JustLink" bought it at costco for 100$ 40 speed writer, i can burn a cd in 1 minute and 30 seconds, full length, it works great, theres no need to go out and pay a stupid ampount of money for one, they are all made in the same factory.

I have had a TDK for 2 years now. I have never had any issues with it. I have seen quite a few burners lately dirt cheap on my favorite site. www.edealinfo.com They seem to have burner deals almost daily. Let us know how you make out.

I just checked www.edealinfo.com They have a LiteOn DVD Dual format burner and CD burner for $79. It was posted on their site 11/28