Buying a CD-ROM

[ladin]

Now that Kenwood's 72x TrueX CD-ROM has been discontinued I'm at a bit of a loss for the purchase of a CD-ROM Drive. I'm about to purchase a Plextor 12x Burner but I've been having alot of problems with the faster burners because of buffer underruns and alot of times I can only attain either 2x or 4x burns on the fly. To the best of my knowledge this is because the CD-Rom can't access the data fast enough for the burner to burn on the fly. I need to know what CD-ROM drive I can purchase and feel 100% comfortable that when i plug those two bad boyz in that I can get my full 12x on the fly. Thanks in advance. Ladin
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[Comtech]

Any good 52x or better will handle the speed. The problem with the buffer underruns is more likely the PCI bus/RAM speed than the CD-ROM speed.
I've got an el-cheapo "Lite-on" 52x with an LG 8x4x32 CD-RW, and can burn on the fly with no toubles, BUT, I'm running a FSB of 120mhz (overclocked Celeron 600) with 256meg of RAM.
Your mileage will vary. Cheers,
Jim
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[brendanhedges]

many new cd rw recorders are now being advertised as being guarrenteed against buffer underruns.
I have heard some bad things about the plextor drives recently so be careful.
also if connecting the cdrw on ide make sure it has its own channel (set to master) and is not shared as this will drasticly reduse performance.
In devise manager if 'enable dma' is selectable ensure it is this will reduce cpu useage and allow for smother operation. (ignor warning that pops up).

hope this helps

brendan

 

[Comtech]

You can purchase newer CD-RW's that have "burn proof" technology. That's what brendan is referring to above.
He's also right (mostly) about where to put the CD-RW.
Most manufacturers recommend that the CD-RW be the secondary master, the CD-ROM be primary slave. That way you can utilize the full bus speed (bi-directional parallel data) instead of 1/2 bus speed. To clarify; If the CD-ROM and CD-RW are on the same channel, the bus works double to transfer the same data, thus buffer problems.
I explain a bit more here:

http://www.pcmech.com/article.htm?howto-audiocd

Cheers,
Jim
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[ladin]

Thanks for all your input but I have one other question. My hard drive is UDMA66 but I haven't found a cd-rom higher than UDMA33 so if i put a UDMA33 CDROM on the same channel as my hard drive will this drop the transfer rate down to UDMA33? That is what I have heard in the past and thats why I have always avoided putting the CDROM on the same channel as the hard drive.

Thanks Ladin
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Build computers, C++, Tech support for 1 1/2 years, Web Development using MySQL, MINTI, Flash, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Homesite, and of course, HTML.

 

[brendanhedges]

try to avoid putting a cd rom and a hard drive on the same ide channel as the system performance will be drastically reduced. this is because the signal in the ide cable will have to be pushed one way to the mobo and then back up the same cable to the other device.

its much better to have a straigt through connection detween devices. ie out of cd via cable to ide port 1 though mobo out of ide port2 into HDD. etc


if you have a 66 and 33 device the speed will default to the lower spec device ie 33.

 

[twertman68]

i have a creative 52x cd rom and i still have problems burning from some media.i also have 2 lite-on 40x cdroms and the one is reading 3 times better than the other.i also would like to know what brand is best.

 

[ladin]

Brendanhedges that was kind of confusing. Could you explain that a little better. I have 2 ide channels and 3 devices, a hard drive, a burner and a cdrom. How do I hook this up so I don't lose performance on my hard drive and don't get buffer underruns? Ladin
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Build computers, C++, Tech support for 1 1/2 years, Web Development using MySQL, MINTI, Flash, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Homesite, and of course, HTML.

 

[Comtech]

Put the HD as primary master. Slave the CD-ROM to it (ONLY if you're willing to sacrifice ATA66). Put the CD-RW as secondary master.
I find that a 7200rpm (or greater) HD is much faster than worrying about ATA33/66/100, so I put the CD-ROM as slave to the HD so I can burn "on the fly" with no troubles.
To maintain speed, put the HD as primary master, CD-RW as secondary master, and CD-ROM as secondary slave. You'll probably have to image to your HD to burn this way, depending on your system, speed of the bus, speed of the CD-Rom, etc. Cheers,
Jim
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[brendanhedges]

as jim says

 

[Shocker838]

what do u guys think of the ricoh 12/10/32/8 cdr/dvd-rom?? also what about the tdk velocd 16x?? "Less work more network" (HP) -- its so catchy

 

[brendanhedges]

I don't know about the combo drive but I have got a Ricoh cdrw and it is fine.
It burns 600megs in 7 mins @ 4x
I didn't buy the fastest player as i only use it occasionally it cost me £90+vat about 2 months ago.

hopes this helps