AOpen CD-RWs?

[2336]

What kind of reputation do AOpen CD-RWs have? Has anyone here had good or bad experiences with them? I'd like to get a feel for what kind of CD-RW they put out. Thanks for your input folks.

 

[AkumaBao]

I just had an AOpen CD-ROM fail today. It was only about 3 months old.

 

[Mitzi]

I've not had one personally but I know the general opinion is they are a bit cr@p. Saying that, I got my father-in-law to be an AOpen CDROM afew months back and still its working perfectly, although it doesn't really get used all that much.

 

[RayEarth]

i have an aopen 1232 cdrw, and i wouldn't recommend it, I have an aopen 1640 pro dvdrom which is fine, but they just stink when it comes to cdrw. I burned a copy of games on my high quality verbatim datalife plus cdrw at 10x and while trying different recording modes, such as disc at once, i wasn't able to erase the cdrw, also I had 2 other cdrw become bad after the erase process, it would keep on erasing even when it said 100% and then awhile later the cdrw pops out and when you put it back in, instead of saying blank disc, it says media error, I'm was thinking about suckering someone into buying my aopen cdrw but since it's so close to a holiday, I decided to not sucker anyone until next year.

 

[2336]

Whew! Not good, eh?! Anyone else? Even though 3 out of 3 has pretty much made up my mind. Thanks folks.

 

[Hobbes28]

This is my own personal experience. I bought the Pine Technology 24X10X40 (rebadged AOpen CDRW2440, even flashed it to the new v2.02 firmware) from Amazon.com when they had it on sale plus it had a $20 rebate (sale - coupon - gift certificate - rebate, I'll have a total of $24.99 in the drive), so I figured what the heck. At the time some people were getting Lite-Ons and that was what I was hoping for. Obviously it wasn't but I firgured for $24.99 I'd keep it and give it a try.

In an attempt to make this already long post relatively short here's my two cents worth. BTW, I also purchased a Lite-ON 24X10X40 (Cendyne deal at Office Max right after Thanksgiving) and put in an almost identical setup right beside mine (my wife's rig, she is into digital photography and mp3s) so I've made some real world comparisons for fun. Here goes...

All comparisons were done on AMD rigs running Win98SE and Nero v5.5.5.1...

AOpen 24X10X40 using JustLink (buffer under-run protection) and JustSpeed (test media for optimal burn speed) and both of these can be enabled or disabled in Nero. Firmware v2.02

Lite-On 24X10X40 using BurnProof (buffer under-run protection) Firware v5S0D

The drive (AOpen) is whisper quiet and smooth. After updating to firmware v2.02 (didn't need to but everything recognizes it as an AOPen CDRW2440 instead of CD-RW 24X10X40 (Pine)) I've been able to burn just about everything @ 24X without errors with JustSpeed turned off. Some of the media I've tried:

- Naushua 12X - (bought at Wal-Mart, 50pk @ $9.99, left over from my Plextor 12X10X32 days), these burn fine @ 24X! They do have what looks like the AZO dark blue dye that seems to be highly thought of.

- Imation 16X - burn fine @ 24X, no errors

- TDK 16X - burn fine @ 24X, no errors

- Fuji 16X (remarked 24X) - burn fine @ 24X, no errors (JustSpeed On)

- KHpermedia 16X - burn fine @ 24X, no errors

- KHypermedia 24X - burn fine @ 24X, no errors (JustSpeed On)

I won't go into great depth on the same media in the Lite-On since your asking mainly about the AOpen but the Lite-On was slightly a little more picky, but still burns fast.

When it came to writing to CD-RWs it gets a little more interesting. I use Norton Ghost (DOS based prog.) to backup our rigs to generic 10X CD-RWS. Both rigs are using identical BIOS with identical settings.

AOpen burns at 122MB/Min (close to 12X if I'm doing the calculation right)

Lite-On burns at 70MB/Min (close to 7X if I'm doing the calculation right)

The AOpen also reads CD-RWs back faster on a Restore than the Lite-On.

I know I probably stepped on alot of Lite-On toes but these are my own personal experiences and I do own and use both drives on a regular basis (we burn about 10 disks a week for family and friends). Soi take this for what it's worth as this is my first AOpen as well as the Lite-On (been using both for about two weeks).

Summary:

AOpen is a little quieter than the Lite-On, seems to have some nice options (Justlink and JustSpeed), JustSpeed guarantees the right speed based on a test write to an unused section of the CD-R (ATIP), faster writes and reads on CD-RWs and it is priced about the same as the Lite-On.

I like mine!

 

[KingRat3]

I own the Aopen 1232a, which I purchased about 5 months ago from Newegg and I am very happy with it. I have burned 60+ audio cds and pc software and have never have had a problem. It's DAE is very good and it is a good burner as well. Before buying this cdrw I did an extensive search on it. It was highly recommended at numerous sites, such as storagereview.com and cdrlabs.com.

If you are out to purchase a 24x cdrw I would highly recommend the LiteOn however. I recommend the LiteOn over the Aopen because I've read the 24x Aopen drive doesn't write at full 24x speed when JustLink is enabled (sanyo's version of burnproof).

 

[2336]

Whoa, the other end of the spectrum! There's hope after all. I would be using it to burn driver cds for system builds so on the average I burn10-20 cd's a week. A lot of the time I end up burning additional drivers onto CDs as I find I need them. So far I am very pleased with my Lite-On 16x using Easy CD Creator 5. I just wanted to get some opinions and see if it was worth the hassle of getting a new burner. Thanks folks. If there's anyone else with good experiences with the AOpens I would love to hear about it.