CD drive or DVD? Or both?

[Noobtastic]

I willl be building a system next month, and I have everything down except my CD/DVD drives.

Now-a-days we have DVDRW, CDRW...and all that other crap.

Im just confused..

Here are my requirments:

-I want to be able to run CD's (Program and Music)
-I want to be able to burn CD's (I would like to be able to burn Music and Programs)
-I want to be able to run DVD's (At the highest quality; x16, x8....x56, whatever is the fastest.
-I want to be able to run/copy DVD-handycam dvd's (Im guessing there are DVDRW? They dont appear to look like a basic DVD, they are about 2/3's smaller..)

Im willing to spend 100 bucks for both drives...

What are your guy's suggestions??

 

[Peter]

Normally, one single DVD/RW drive will do. A second (DVD reader) drive will be handy if you're copying disks often, or for example if you like to listen to a music CD whilst doing something that requires another disk.

DVD viewing, by the way, will always happen at 1x speed.

 

[Zepper]

I like to have two optical drives. The main one should be a DVD/CD burner now. Benq 16xx seems to be popular right now - both Plextor and Sony have made variants on it. The other would be a CDRW/DVD-ROM Combo drive (or even another DVD/CD burner as you can get 'em pretty cheap - maybe have two different brands to have the broadest range of competences) as I don't like to spend money on one-trick ponies any more when the prices are so close.

.bh.

 

[Eureka]

You can get two DVD-RW for under 100 (two burners), or a DVD-RW and a DVD-ROM (a burner and a drive) for under I would say... 70.

Norm

 

[hclarkjr]

read my signature below for what i use.

 

[shortylickens]

Originally posted by: Noobtastic
I willl be building a system next month, and I have everything down except my CD/DVD drives.

Now-a-days we have DVDRW, CDRW...and all that other crap.

Im just confused..

Here are my requirments:

-I want to be able to run CD's (Program and Music)
-I want to be able to burn CD's (I would like to be able to burn Music and Programs)
-I want to be able to run DVD's (At the highest quality; x16, x8....x56, whatever is the fastest.
-I want to be able to run/copy DVD-handycam dvd's (Im guessing there are DVDRW? They dont appear to look like a basic DVD, they are about 2/3's smaller..)

Im willing to spend 100 bucks for both drives...

What are your guy's suggestions??

First off: the numbers dont mean quality, they mean speed of the burner. Truthfully, (if you want to ensure the best quality disc) dont burn it at Max Speed. Burn it at single speed. I think the max for DVD burning is 16x.

The smaller DVD's you see are called Mini-DVD's. Regular discs (CD and DVD) are 12cm across and mini-discs (CD and DVD) are 8cm across. A mini CD holds between 180 and 210 MB. A mini DVD holds about 1.5GB. Its the format Nintendo Game Cube uses. A dual-layer DVD holds 8.4GB. Thats the format most commercial movies use.

You can do almost everything you want with a single drive. Just get a Dual-Layer DVD burner. It will also do single layer DVD's and all CD's. I use DVD Shrink to backup DVD's and it makes an ISO file of the disc on my hard drive. No need for a seperate reader and burner.

If you like to be able to read and burn at the same time, you also need to get a regular DVD reader. You pick up a decent one for about 20 bucks from Newegg.
Two burners is kind of pointless if you dont plan on making bulk copies of things. Nero will let you use multiple burners at once.
Also, it seems that most DVD burners dont have the best CD burn speeds. If you really need to copy tons of regular CD's, you may want a regular CD burner that runs at about 52x32x52.