Does it Make Sense to Buy a DVD RW and a CD-RW?

[Looney]

Naw, it wouldn't make sense, at least not now. Back when DVD burners were much more expensive, and you burned a lot of CDRWs, you wouldn't want all that CDRWing to wear down your DVD burner... but with how cheaper burners are now, it would be useless.

 

[moonsite]

DVD-Rom and DVD Burner drive. That would be my recommendation also.

 

[batmanuel]

Originally posted by: Zepper
If you burn a lot of CDs it will take the wear and tear off of your DVD burner. But I'd get a CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo drive just for the added flexibility - not much more expensive any more.

.bh.

Realistically, by the time you start to wear out your DVD burner doing lots of CDs, it'll probably be time for a BluRay upgrade anyway.

 

[Gigantopithecus]

Originally posted by: Baked

Originally posted by: Gigantopithecus
The question you should be asking is $40 worth the time you'll save burning CDs on a solid CD burner at 52x rather than 24x on a DVD burner. I burn a lot of audio & data CDs, so to me it is. If you'll only occasionally be burning CDs, then maybe not. And it's not like you can't buy just the DVD burner now, and buy the CD burner later if you find 24x CD burning is too slow.

WTH, 24x? You can burn CDs at 48x w/ all the latest 16X DVD writers.

Doh, my bad. I just browsed through newegg. I didn't realize you could burn CDs @ 48x with the newer DVD burners.

In that case, and considering how cheap those DVD burners are, I don't see why you'd need both types of burners.

 

[bigboxes]

Originally posted by: Gigantopithecus

Originally posted by: Baked

Originally posted by: Gigantopithecus
The question you should be asking is $40 worth the time you'll save burning CDs on a solid CD burner at 52x rather than 24x on a DVD burner. I burn a lot of audio & data CDs, so to me it is. If you'll only occasionally be burning CDs, then maybe not. And it's not like you can't buy just the DVD burner now, and buy the CD burner later if you find 24x CD burning is too slow.

WTH, 24x? You can burn CDs at 48x w/ all the latest 16X DVD writers.

Doh, my bad. I just browsed through newegg. I didn't realize you could burn CDs @ 48x with the newer DVD burners.

In that case, and considering how cheap those DVD burners are, I don't see why you'd need both types of burners.

Yup. My NEC 3500AG burns CDs at 48x and it also allows me to burn at 2x. I do have a DVD-ROM drive though. I use it to rip CDs. I don't believe in this wearing out theory. They do wear out, but not before there's something quite better out there for cheap. I paid $60 for the NEC 2500A (8x +/-) and 4 months later I upgraded to my current 16x DL burner for the same $60 cost. I just gave my old one to my sister's family and it's new to them.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: Budman
DVd burners can burn cd's you know & the latest dvd burners can but cd-r's very fast now.
So no there is no reason to buy 2 units when a dvd burner will do both.

Just not as fast, and not as well. If you really care about burning, I would recommend seperate units myself. Lite-On CD-RW drives support 52X reading/burning, and do "correct EFM", something that many DVD-RWs do not do when burning CD-Rs. I've been toying with the idea of getting one of those myself, except the newer combo-drive variety that reads DVDs too, so I could copy DVDs disc-to-disc to my current NEC DVD-RW, and use KProbe to scan DVD burn quality, except that apparently the combo drives and DVD-ROMs don't work all that well comared to the Lite-On DVD-RWs with KProbe.

 

[Texun]

CDRW's are too cheap not to have one in your rig. I'm not fond of using a $65 burner when I can burn at 52X with a $25 burner.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: BouZouki
Your telling me using burning a lot of media will mess up the burner? I have used a burner for years in one of my computers, I have never experianced problems, like I said, it probaly have to do with the quality of the burner.

More or less. Apparently, the laser heads do have a finite power-on lifetime. (I wish I had some concrete data on this, as to what those lifetimes nominally are, but they are finite AFAIK.) Better-quality burners will last longer (things like the tray mechanics, and the bearings on the CD spindle matter too, they can wear out pre-maturely on the cheaper drives), but eventually they may give up the ghost too. But a good-quality drive will probably have more issues with eventual dust build-up (both on the laser lens and the sliding head assembly) than the laser burning out. If anything, I would say that that and bearing wear/overheating are the worst things that could happen to a drive. If you have two seperate drives, you'll have half of the bearing wear on each.

 

[JBT]

I'd just get a single drive personally but if you have some extra money grab a CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive.

 

[Sunbird]

I second JBT's advice, its what I have, a DVD Writer and a Combo (aka CD-RW/DVD-ROM) drive.

It also serves as a nice backup method, since if your DVD Writer dies you can still read CD's and DVD's, and write CD's.

 

[Oyeve]

Originally posted by: Sunbird
I second JBT's advice, its what I have, a DVD Writer and a Combo (aka CD-RW/DVD-ROM) drive.

It also serves as a nice backup method, since if your DVD Writer dies you can still read CD's and DVD's, and write CD's.

I third. I watch movies all the time and burn cds all the time so I'd rather wear out the cheaper drive than the more expensive drive. So I have a samsung combo cdrw/DVD rom drive and a Sony DVD burner and only use the sony to burn DVDs.

 

[beany323]

i never had a dvd burner before, so i only thought that cd burners=cd's and dvd=dvd's.

i just got a dvd burner and since i only have 2 slots avail (dell 4700) i need to pull out either my dvd rdr or my cdrw.

probably gonna yank out the cd.. since in my noobish world didnt know that.. thanks!!

/bow

 

[wchou]

Originally posted by: JPMNICK
What I did was get a DVD-RW as my burning drive (CD's and DVD's) I then got a DVD-ROM drive for my other drive. The reason I did this was because the -ROM drives typically read quieter with less fan noise. I am not that interested in burning a CD at the fastes speeds possible.

what you say is true, and less wear on your burner as well!

 

[0roo0roo]

it used to when dvd cost more and cdrws were practically free after rebate. now its just for kicks since having two drives is generally convenient.even if the cdrw is just used as a reader 99% of the time. 24 bux? lol

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

Originally posted by: Baked
DVD Writer + DVD-ROm. /thread

Definately

 

[wchou]

I noticed burner takes longer to recognize the cd or dvd when you insert it and causes a serious lag enough to cause your computer to crash as well
The reason is that its trying to distinguish between a blank media and a written media
a cdrom or dvdrom does not have that extra steps, reads better and faster in most cases. if you put a blank media in a burner it has no problems, it detects it fast.
I was a fool like most thinking that cd/dvd-rom are next to useless, I was wrong. :->