Whats a good dual layer dvdrw to buy?

[Pantera1222]

I have a liteon ldw 411S dvdrw drive and I want to get rid of it cause I have some much problems and buy a dual layer burner. Can anyone recommend any good ones. I would like something that hardly has problems writing and maybe even one with lightscribe or something. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks!

[studtrooper]

Go to http://www.newegg.com and type in Litescribe at the search to see what LS drives are available. I believe all that is out right now are BenQ and HP drives. If I had to chose, the BenQ wins big. For non-LS drives, depends:

Cheapest: The latest NEC or Pioneer 16x drives
Most Expensive: the latest Plextor

Any five of those should make you happy. Only bad thing is that the current LS drives don't overspeed DVD+R DL media (i.e. you are stuck at burning at 2.4x). http://www.cdrlabs.com has some great detailed reviews if you're further interested.

[xastey]

i have the NEC 3500a and its wonders...

[Pantera1222]

Well after I heard about how much more expensive the disc were for the lightscribe I think I will just stick with a regular dual burner. I am gonna look around on new egg and see what I can get. Also if anyone knows a good dual dvd writer with a bundle software of the new nero. I would really like to get that. Thanks.

[Starlight]

NEC and LG are first and second.nec first and lg second as the most used dvd writers in the top ten list,and they are both D/L burners and they sell for not a bad price at all,i`ve being using a lg single layer burner for quite a while and not one problem with it,sounds like that firmware i got you didn`t do the trick Pantera1222 sorry to hear that.

[abrown15]

I am using a Sony 710-UL external drive - and have not had a single bad burn to date. Even when buring PS2 games at x8 onto ritek media, the PS2 seems to read them no problem. I know Sony tend to be at the upper end of the price range - but you at the end of the day I always believe you only get what you pay for!

[shortbusjonnie]

I just got an NEC-3520a from Newegg and I couldn't be happier. The drive has burned without fail for me right out of the box, and there's a ton of reliable modded firmware out there for it. In the last 4 weeks, I've burned just south of 100 discs (CD's and DVD's) without failure. And I think Newegg lists them for about $55-ish. It doesn't do lightscribe, but it burns +/- DL at up to 4x (I haven't tested that yet, and can be faster with modded firmware), and burns single layer at up to 16x (I've done that).

In short, it good. Me likey.

-!SB!-

[studtrooper]

Originally Posted by Jackass57 i dont think they're that popular, but I\O Magic drives are on the top of my list! does anyone have any exp. with Pioneer drives? Plextor?

I/O Magic doesn't even make their own drives. They license technology from the likes of Lite-on and BenQ, and sometimes some no-name brands...

[Kraken]

Definatly go with NEC. Ive had a NEC drive for 5 years and it has burned literally thousands of disks and its still going strong. My roomate bought this one http://www2.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16827152035 and I highly reccomend it, it will burn at 16x and has yet to make a bad disk (not counting gamecube which is probably media related).

Philips is the worst ever. I had one of their CDR drives, I wasted over 20 cdrs and never once got a good burn. I/O magic isn't much better. I got one that detects as "Generic DVDR" it has yet to burn a succesful PS2 or Xbox game, though it handles movies fine.

Sharpie > Lightscribe. Its too expensive and gimmicky. Unless its something you really want, don't worry about it.

Don't fuss over getting the bundled nero. They ALWAYS bundle Nero Express not the full nero. Nero express won't let you finalize a disk after burning an iso or burn different modes of cd/dvd. You are much better off using the full nero trial from their website, or the free DVD decryptor.

[studtrooper]

Originally Posted by Kraken Sharpie > Lightscribe. Its too expensive and gimmicky. Unless its something you really want, don't worry about it.

Another thing to think about (besides the stupid cost of LS media) is that all LS drives out right now are a generation behind that companies' best drive. The new Benq LS drive can't write to DVD-R faster than 8x plus it is stuck at writing to DVD+R DL at 2.4x instead of the more normal 4x.