Are Pacific Digital burners good and how to tell if my burner is about to die?

[Bronxkid]

Was looking for an external Dual layer burner and came across the Pacific Digital 30297. Here's the link to the webpage:
Link

Just wanted to know if this was a good burner. It's quite cheap and my current LG drive is burning very slow recently. That' brings up another question, is there a way to tell if a burner is about to die? Will there be errors while burning or can burning dvds/cds simply start taking alot longer which is what's happening to mine? Thanks.

 

[MichaelD]

I've never heard of Pacific Digital. Cheap price doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad product, though I'm wary of brands I've never heard of before. If it's cheap and you can buy it locally (i.e. not pay for shipping) then give it a shot.

BTW, why do you want an external USB burner instead of an internal one?

Optical drives can be really unpredicatble. Sometimes they give errors/won't read discs/burn coasters when they're about to die. Sometimes they just die with zero warning. I've had both scenarios happen to me.

Quick question: Have you been working in your case lately? Possibly you damaged the IDE cable that connects the drive to the motherboard. I've done that.

If you've not been working in the case lately, maybe the IDE cable just went bad. It happens. If you have a spare IDE cable, try swapping out the cable to see if the problem goes away. If it doesn't, the drive is dead.

 

[RebateMonger]

Pacific Digital, like a lot of off-brand distributors, re-package various brands of hardware under their own name. Several years ago, they were selling Pioneer CD burners under their name. So it's hard to say if Pacific Digital is "good". It'd depend on who actually made the drive.