Ok, I've never owned one of these, but I'm planning on buying one.

For backing up important stuff, we've been limping along with an Iomega 100mb zip drive. While it's cheap and handy for getting stuff back and forth to the office, it's not good for backing up stuff that takes a lot of space, like our photo albums, MP3s, etc. Now my wife's hdd is going out and I need to replace it and do a bunch of backups so I want to buy something that's up to the task.

However, I have no idea about these drives. I hear Plextor is a good brand name and I see their IDE drives are going for ~$100-150 on price watch. The lowest priced ones are 32X Read 8X Write 4X Rewrite. CD-ROM performance has never been a big issue for me. I limped along with an 8x CD-ROM drive for a really long time and never felt put out, but I'm wondering if 8x write is just going to be so slow it's going to totally piss me off.

Should I be planning on spending more on this thing? Is Plextor a decent brand?

Any help greatly appreciated.

Always listen to the professional pirates!

Check here, though you may have to manually navigate to that URL to get around their session-cookie system. It's under CD-Writers: Buying a CD Writer on the left.

For speed, 8x is roughly 10 minutes, 16 probably around 5.

go with a plextor. i've got a 16x plextor writer in the machine next to me, and it rocks my socks off. bought it when they were going for ~US$200 or so a while back.. hell, if you can get 'em cheaper than that now, by all means, do it. :)

can't say i've had any compatibility issues or problems with it reading any discs.. in fact, my norton systemworks 2001 cd that's all scratched up and doesn't work on any of my other 4 cd-rom/cd-r(w) drives, works fine in the plextor for some reason.

also, i totally am in love with 10x re-writable disc capabilities on the plextor. it's not the fastest stuff in the world, but it's like a 650MB floppy disk (non-bootable, mind you).

the model i have is the 'PX-W1610A' (it was a retail kit); probably one of the best purchases i've made within the past couple months. :)

- mike - somewhere in east-central illinois -

I've gone through a couple in the last few years (nothing broke, just left them in machines that I outgrew.) I'd also recommend Plextor. Never had a problem.

I would also recommend Nero for a good all around burning program, and Fuerio specifically for music.

i've got a good friend who went with a plextor and has had only good things to say about it.

i sadly went with an HP and am underwhelmed.

Amanpour

P.S. The eyboard on my laptop s drvng me crazy. Arg.

I'm a big fan of reliability over speed in my boxes, and I've never seen a CD drive take a beating like a Plextor and keep running. What's nice about 'em is they're usually among the best--if not *the* best--performers, as well. Reliability and performance always gets my vote.

Costs a little more, but you'll never regret it.

Good brnds of CDRW drives-

Plextor <- the best.
TDK <-very good.
Philips <-solid.
Lite-On <-good and cheap too.


Bad Brands-
Creative <-I keep hearing horror stories about these.One of my tech friends called these "crap in a box"


Place to get good deals
www.newegg.com

-Monkeybutt

Oops, I screwed up the URL.

here it is.

bah, cdmediaworld...sister site to gamecopyworld. i don't expect to get good opinions from any site like that, unless it is in regards to "what's the best drive to copy all my copy-protected cd's?".

aside from that, i think the point we've all made is that if you want a good drive, it's hard to screw up with a plextor.

- mike - somewhere in east-central illinois -

Yeah, Plextors are great. I personally have an IDE Yamaha 16x and I love it. I would recommend either.

Heh, Mike - it's like asking a professional burglar for advice on what kind of locks to buy, if you're one yourself.

Thanks guys. I ended up going with a plextor and picking up a few other goodies to boot.

Wow, is RAM cheap these days or what? Pretty much no excuse to have less then 512 MB, even if it only makes games load a little faster.

I went with a 12x write, which seems to have favored CD-W status both here and at the pirate central web site. Thanks Jason!

Different Hardware Question:

Sorry to violate the thread with this but it seems foolish to start a whole new thread for a simple question.

Does anybody know what cable/program a guy would get to connect a laptop computer with a desktop computer? i'm so tired of transferring information on floppies.

Thanks fellas.

Amanpour

I use a portable USB external hard-drive as a swift backup and transfer device.

I know you can buy something called a USB Bridge device that basically lets you Network your Laptop and PC quickly and easily. There are also USB transfer cables, but I've heard bad things about that solution.

But if you're like me, and you just want to transfer files - not network - then the portable HD comes in handy more often then you'd think.

It's pricey though.

-Andrew

Amanpour,

i own a Zip drive (well, several of them).. one of them is a parallel interface unit which does the trick rather nicely. not sure what they cost these days, tho. another alternative could be USB/parallel cd-rw drives.

aside from that, i'd say look up the USB Bridge thingy that Andrew(Bub) mentioned and/or look into getting an ethernet card for both machines and just network 'em together. you could do it in a couple of ways: pcmcia(pc card) ethernet adapter -or- usb ethernet adapter. then grab a cheap $20 (or less) ethernet card for the PC and there ya go.

- mike - i've got the lack-of-bandwidth blues -

Amanpour, you would be better off just springing for a couple of nic cards and a hub and running ethernet between them. It is faster than other solutions and if you get a combined router/hub it allows you to share an internet connection (even dial-up) easily.

Even if you don't want to go that route, two nics and a crossover cable (ask a local hardware shop to put one together for you) or two nics and a standard hub (you can get all 3 in a kit these days) would work better than serial cables, zip drives, etc. And a hell of a lot faster.

-- Xaroc

I'll second that vote. Build yourself a little mini-network. It's great for transferring files, and better still for gaming! ;-)

Thanks guys.

Amanpour

Make sure to get 100 megabit, too. You'll thank yourself. Mmm, 12 megs/second.

Yeah, I've been stuck with a 10 for awhile...Eeww...

Won't be long before I pick up a better one, though. One with firewall protection, and a built-in seven-port hub. Ahhh. It makes me smile just to think about it.