One or Two optical Drives?

[LSoares1]

I'm getting the Plextor Model PX-712A. which I intend to use as my primary drive. I'm not sure if I should spend money on another standard DVD drive so I can do disk to disk burn. What do you guys think? do you guys use or even have a secondary optical drive?

 

[Mik3y]

unless you have money to burn, 1 is fine.

 

[Yanagi]

I have 2 and always had. But 1 is really fine i guess. its more like what you prefer and since DVDs are so cheap nowadays I would do it.

 

[Jittos]

i always have 2.
i agree that 1 is fine, but like yanagi said, the second drive is so cheap, y not?

 

[chilled]

I've had the NEC 2500a for a few months now. I still keep my Pioneer 16x DVD drive (from 2000) in my machine.

The main reason I like to have dual DVD drives is that I can always leave a DVD/CD in my old one for games/music/etc and not have to take it out everytime I need to put another in.

 

[Sheriff]

I've always had 2 so I could burn on the fly and nowadays I even use an external in case I want to burn more then 1 copy at a time

 

[LSoares1]

Thanks everyone,
Can you connect two optical drives to a sound card? I remember back a couple of years ago when my sound card only had one input for an audio cable, so I could only play music from the connected drive. I was just wondering if this is still an issue.

 

[StrangerGuy]

As others have said, one optical drive is pretty fine.

 

[Goi]

Originally posted by: LSoares1
Thanks everyone,
Can you connect two optical drives to a sound card? I remember back a couple of years ago when my sound card only had one input for an audio cable, so I could only play music from the connected drive. I was just wondering if this is still an issue.

Modern IDE optical drives do not need the cable to work, as digital audio is done via the IDE cable itself.

 

[JBT]

I've only got one drive but I did have twobut, one of the IDE pins broke off I tried fixing it a few times but it completely kills my system when its plugged in. So not I just have my CDRW. I would buy another drive but just havn't found the need for it yet. the NEC DVD RW's are looking attractive for how inexpensive they are nowadays though.

 

[Brian48]

Two for me.

 

[Kenazo]

I have 2, a DVD drive and a CD-burner. I haven't taken the DVD-burner plunge yet.

 

[JetBlack69]

Hell, I have 3. A 16x cd burner, a 4x dvd +- burner and a 72x cdrom.

 

[Tostada]

I have 3 drives (a DVD-ROM, a DVD-RW, and a CD-RW), but if I was building a new system, I would only have a single DVD-RW in it.

If you burn a TON of CDs/DVDs, you could benefit from two drives for burning on the fly, but if you burn that many things, you might as well get two matching DVD-RW's so you can also have the option of burning two copies at once.

There's always the convenience of being able to leave the FarCry DVD in one drive all the time, but that's not a practical reason to go buy another drive. You'd be better off using CD emulation software, which will make everything run faster and make all your games much more convenient. I mean, with hard drives at under $1 per GB, it's no big deal for me to leave a bunch of ISO's sitting on a drive.

 

[Antisocial Virge]

3 also. dvd, dvdrw and cdrw. 3 hd's also. cdrw is pretty much not worth getting anymore but having a dvd and a dvdrw is nice.

 

[overclock]

I currently have 4

1: PX-708a
2: Sony 4x DVDRW
3: Lite On DVD-ROM
4: Lite On CD-RW

I have my 3 HDs (120, 160, and 250) connected to a card.

Plenty of storage around my house.

 

[boran]

I also have three, I have:
Pioneer 106 DVD reader,
Plextor 48/24/48 CDRW
Lite On DVD+RW (406)

I just never throw something away, and the resale value could be lower than the shipping costs if i'd e-bay it.

 

[THUGSROOK]

2

 

[Kaido]

I have two. Get a second dedicated DVD-ROM in addition to your DVD burner. Most DVD burners now play DVDs at 8x or 12x, but a dedicated DVD-ROM can play at 16x (ie faster ripping).

Additionally, you'll have a backup drive in case one fails and you need it for school or something. You might want to get a CD-RW/16x DVD-ROM in addition to your DVD burner, if you can afford it. Like $50 at Newegg for a nice Lite-on.

 

[Chaotic42]

I've always had two.

A CD-RW and a DVD. Back in the day I had a CD-RW and CD.

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

Two drives or more is psuedo required. The more drives you have the less you have to change cds. Also it allows burning straight from cds.

 

[Gurck]

2: 52x32x52x cdr/rw, 16x dvd-rom