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Plextor PX-712SA died, what next? Another Plextor or is something better?

C

computer

Platinum Member
My POS 712SA died after only a few uses! It works fine with all types of CD media, but does the dreaded twice-flashing then pause, twice flashing then pause, etc., amber LED thing with all DVD media that's inserted! :Q Plextor even told me the drive is now bad.

I thought Plextors were supposed to be the best. It's just out of warranty, so I'm screwed on it and have to buy another. So I'm open to some recommendations please from any of you that have seen recent reviews on DVD+/-R +/-RW drives. I prefer one to be SATA, and it must have an 8mb buffer (or larger if they make them) because I LOVE those large buffers for drag 'n drop!! They are indeed MUCH faster than these weak 2mb buffers. I rarely copy disks, I mostly do packet writing.

Is the PX-716SA decent or are there any bad reviews on it? I haven't done any searches yet but I will, I just wanted to ask here first for any opinions first good or bad on that 716SA, or anything better fitting my criteria.

Thanks.
 
Originally posted by: Fullmetal Chocobo
I used to get nothing but Plextor--now, it's Lite-On FTW. Just not worth the price anymore.
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Does Lite-On make one with an 8mb buffer and SATA?

 
Originally posted by: computer
Originally posted by: Fullmetal Chocobo
I used to get nothing but Plextor--now, it's Lite-On FTW. Just not worth the price anymore.
Click to expand...
Does Lite-On make one with an 8mb buffer and SATA?
Click to expand...

Lite On 2mb model

Guess not... Sorry about that, I thought they did for some reason.

Wow, I didn't realize they had Blue Ray burners out... $600 right now, but it will be nice when they come down....
 
I see at CDRinfo that Plextor isn't even making their own drives now, it said BenQ is making some of them.

......A future release of the PX-740A with SATA is not something you can depend on since Plextor has stopped making its own drives and has opted for an OEM solution, as in the case of the PX-740A which is manufactured by BenQ.

I can't find anyone yet but Plextor that sells the 716SA.
 
I still can't find a single new 716SA or 712SA anywhere. Has anyone tried to actually fix one of these drive with these flashing yellow LED symptoms?
 
Originally posted by: computer
I thought Plextors were supposed to be the best.
Thanks.
Click to expand...

Here's where you went wrong 😛

I'd just grab that OEM Samsung...it's not like you have much choice for SATA-based opticals anyway 🙁
 
No, hardly any choice at all. However, I have some IDE > SATA adapters and can convert any IDE to SATA.

That Samsung....only a 2mb buffer. :disgust:

Be warned about getting anything OEM from Samsung. They are the reining kings of refurb equipment and any OEM from them stands a great chance of being used & refurbed.
 
i was a big Plextor fan, until the LG DVDRW 8x arrived (now using 18x LG), then i switched to LG, cheap yet fully 100% compatible with all medias types, not a single error.
 
Originally posted by: AllGamer
i was a big Plextor fan, until the LG DVDRW 8x arrived (now using 18x LG), then i switched to LG, cheap yet fully 100% compatible with all medias types, not a single error.
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Any of theirs have an 8mb buffer?

 
8MB buffers are very hard to find now with the buffer underrun protection - unfortunately even Plextor has gone to 2MB buffers with the 755SA and 760SA (which isn't available here anyway). But the 716AL slot loader still has it and is $100. AR right now - it's not SATA though. Newegg's configurator shows no other DVD burner with 8MB buffer. The 716SA is out of production I think (guess I'm wrong - still on Plex's list). Yes, Plex made one model with the Philips chip (740A) that the Benq 1640 used for a low end line-filler and one with the Teac/Panasonic chip (750A) to get a quick DVD-RAM gap filler but I doubt they'll do it again as the 750 had such poor general performance. Lately they have gone back to Sanyo chips and the price is much better than in the past on release. Remember that the 712 (still my primary burner) was intruduced at around $190...
. I was thinking that Samsung's retail box units had 8MB and the OEM had only two, but I can find no confirmation of that either. Everything I looked at on the Samsung site had 2MB.

Good luck. If you find any others with 8MB, report back.

.bh.


.bh.
 
Only a one year warranty on Plextor in the States unless you bought an extended warr. from the store. IAC, they don't fix anything any more - they just replace and if they don't make the think any more, you're SOL.

.b.h.
 
Originally posted by: Zepper
8MB buffers are very hard to find now with the buffer underrun protection - unfortunately even Plextor has gone to 2MB buffers with the 755SA and 760SA (which isn't available here anyway). But the 716AL slot loader still has it and is $100. AR right now - it's not SATA though. Newegg's configurator shows no other DVD burner with 8MB buffer. The 716SA is out of production I think (guess I'm wrong - still on Plex's list). Yes, Plex made one model with the Philips chip (740A) that the Benq 1640 used for a low end line-filler and one with the Teac/Panasonic chip (750A) to get a quick DVD-RAM gap filler but I doubt they'll do it again as the 750 had such poor general performance. Lately they have gone back to Sanyo chips and the price is much better than in the past on release. Remember that the 712 (still my primary burner) was intruduced at around $190...
. I was thinking that Samsung's retail box units had 8MB and the OEM had only two, but I can find no confirmation of that either. Everything I looked at on the Samsung site had 2MB.

Good luck. If you find any others with 8MB, report back.
Click to expand...

NewEgg shows 3 with the 8mb buffer when I last checked, and two are out of the question because they cost a fortune since they are that Blue Ray stuff. I saw the 716AL there, but check out how bad the reviews are for it! That's why I didn't get it. These things are dying at about 10-12 months or so, and many are dying at 3 months or so. Plextor seems to have thrown their quality out the proverbial window. I confronted them about why they build their drives to die right at about a year, I never expected an HONEST comment on that though.

I can't find a single drive (regardless of buffer or interface) at NewEgg with more than 15-20 reviews that doesn't have many 1-star reviews for either DOA, dead in a few weeks, or not being able to write to DVD media, etc., etc. It seems no one cares about quality anymore and is more concerned with shoving these POS drives out to market with total disregard for quality. Meanwhile, I still have my several years old 2mb, 4mb, and 8mb buffer CDRW drives that still work as they did on the first day! I'm thinking screw the DVD drives and I just stick my 8mb Teac 540 back in and use it. Optical media is about as reliable as a Tijuana crack whore anyway. I had dozens of them go bad after only 2-3 years, and this is SEVERAL different brands, and several dye types of gold, blue, silver, green, doesn't matter. So much for their claimed alleged "100 year life span". DVD media can't hold enough data anyway to back up a whole HD, unless you span it. Currently I'm using 3 HD's for backup in the event 1 or 2 of them should crap out.
 
Originally posted by: Amaroque
Correct me if I'm wrong, but shouldn't a 712SA still be under warranty?
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No, not if you bought it more than a year ago. I had mine about 13 months, which was of course 1 month past the warranty! And again, only did about 3 DVD's on it (one a frisbee) and only about 10 CD's!

I've seen many 90-day warranties for Plextor units, I don't know what's up with that. Especially on Ebay, they all claim "NIB" and the like, yet I know that Plextor's refurb units are all only 90-day warranty, plus these lying a-holes at Ebay (typical for Ebay sellers) are saying they are still under warranty when NONE of them are. I asked Plextor about this and they said they won't honor any 90-day warranty if the drive's manufacturing date is more than a year old. These drives on Ebay have dates as old as 2005. Therefore, buyer beware, no warranty.

 
I resemble that remark - my eBay listings may be information overload but all of it is as accurate as possible. I'm glad I'm atypical...

My 712 runs like clockwork after hundreds of CDs and maybe a half dozen DVDs. But I'm very careful of mounting all my drives so as not to stress their chassis, don't use screws that are too long and clean them regularly (open the chassis and vacuum out the dust and clean the optical system with lintless tools). Cleanliness is next to godliness when it comes to optical drives. Smoking is murder on the optical and head tracking systems - JIC anyone there has that foul habit.

.bh.
 
My crappy 716sa did the same thing 1 week after the warrenty died. This was the first time I paid over 100$ for a dvd burner and the first time owning a plextor. I will never do either again!

The only differance is mine burns dvd just fine also reads cdr but will not burn a cd!
 
Originally posted by: Zepper
I resemble that remark - my eBay listings may be information overload but all of it is as accurate as possible. I'm glad I'm atypical...
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Yeah, nice to hear that at least ONE person gives the information needed, and accurate at that! On the rare occasions I go there, it chaps my ass to see BS like "Hard drive....I think it's 40mb, not sure. $15". WTF?? Yep, 40mb instead of 40gb, no name, no brand, no model, no interface, no condition, nothing. Ebay should set some kind of listing criteria, but of course they couldn't care less about stuff like that, nor scammers as long as they get their $ from the sales. (Ok, so much for that mini rant). LOL. :laugh:

My 712 runs like clockwork after hundreds of CDs and maybe a half dozen DVDs. But I'm very careful of mounting all my drives so as not to stress their chassis, don't use screws that are too long and clean them regularly (open the chassis and vacuum out the dust and clean the optical system with lintless tools). Cleanliness is next to godliness when it comes to optical drives. Smoking is murder on the optical and head tracking systems - JIC anyone there has that foul habit.
Click to expand...
Is your's IDE or SATA? Well that's good to hear in the unfathomable unlikely event I can ever find one of these (SATA or otherwise) SOB's on this planet. Looks like I'm going to have to get a NEC 3550A if I get another DVD burner. (Say, does anyone know what the difference is between the 3540, 3540A, 3550 and 3550A? Nothing at NEC's site about this, and they only show the "A" suffix models with the exact same identical info for both 3540A & 3550A drives).
 
Originally posted by: crispy2010
My crappy 716sa did the same thing 1 week after the warrenty died. This was the first time I paid over 100$ for a dvd burner and the first time owning a plextor. I will never do either again!

The only differance is mine burns dvd just fine also reads cdr but will not burn a cd!
Click to expand...
This one was the first DVD burner I ever owned. I'm going to take mine apart and see if I can find something obviously wrong with it. That doesn't make any sense about working fine with CD media and not working at all with DVD. Then in your case, the opposite. That's strange.

 
BTW, the NEC 3550A's are also disappearing. After searching through about 15 search result pages, I only found 3 places that had them. Only ONE place had one retail but it was white. The other two had a silver and a black one, OEM (and probably used or returned).

NewEgg doesn't sell them anymore, they don't even LIST the damn thing anymore so I can't even check out the user reviews! I found the original URL and put that in the web archive site, and it had over 400 reviews with a 5 "egg" rating, but that only page they had only had 10 of the reviews on it! It may also have a page or two of bad reviews FAIK.

Of course, NEC like Plextor, has replaced a previous good unit with a POS. All of the replacement NEC's I saw at NewEgg had only a few reviews and 4 egg's or less overall rating at BEST. Quality just keeps going downhill, and that's not just with optical drives either.
 
The g** d*** thing just burnt a cdr. I havnt tried since upgrading to cd2 and new mobo. I was getting the light error and plextor said it was bad, now the thing is working, WTF!:shocked:

Wonder if it was a compatibility problem with old mobo (g1-turbo)? Did you just change mobo?
 
Originally posted by: crispy2010
The g** d*** thing just burnt a cdr. I havnt tried since upgrading to cd2 and new mobo. I was getting the light error and plextor said it was bad, now the thing is working, WTF!:shocked:

Wonder if it was a compatibility problem with old mobo (g1-turbo)? Did you just change mobo?
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ONCE AGAIN, no email notifications!!! What the hell is going on??

I took mine apart hoping to see another "eyebrows from Punjab"* episode possibly causing it, but no such luck. I cleaned the lens well, still screwed up. I even removed the ATA to SATA bridge on the back and used it as IDE, didn't help. (Apparently these SATA models are identical to the IDE models with that converter board being the difference! The IDE and SATA models also use the same firmware). At least I have a converter board from it I can use on a new IDE DVD burner. I guess I'll be forced to get the NEC 3550A.

(* My Dell 2001FP has been replaced FOUR TIMES, now, make it FIVE! FOUR of those times was due to freakin' big-ass frightening proto-human EYELASHES or EYEBROWS behind the LCD panel!! It appears "Punjab" in India along with assembling Dell monitors is also GETTING FACIALS while putting them together. ROTFLMAO!! :laugh: )
 
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