Would someone be kind enough to offer some advice CD burners? Ive never used one. Ive been using Castlewood Orb 2.2 gig drives and media, but am having problems, and think its time to add a CD burner. Is the technology today relatively painless drag and drop, or is it a pretty involved and time consuming procedure? Looking at either the TDK 16-10-40 or the Yamaha with the same specs. Specs say something about stopping buffer underrun error, whatever that is. Any opinions? Thanks Pinto

Go with the Yamaha. TDK seems to have forgotten how to even simply put out a reliable blank media for the format. I had a Yahmaha 4/4/16 Scsi burner and it did quite well. However, once I decided to go IDE I got the Hewlitt Packard 10/8/32 or something like that and it rocks properly. For me choices are limited because I need a burner that reads/writes CD+G format, which only a few types of drive do. -Darth

Thank you for the quick response Darth, I guess you're saying that TDK brand media is bad news. Anything else to avoid? By the way, what is G format? Thanks. Pinto

Yeah Yamaha's are the best! Best Buy had some LightSpeed brand 16x burners for $299.99 that were Yamaha's with LightSpeeds facsia plate. That's a good deal since it can burn a full cd within 5 minutes.

I personally had great experience with a Sony burner. Incredible support desk. Just upgraded to a fast Teac and so far so good. The most important thing to remember is to make sure it does what you want it to do(ie. overburning, etc.) and comes with good burning software. Nero is one of the best. If you want to try it, there is a demo at ahead.de .

Depends on what you want to do. Search Yahoo or Google to find sites that give info on CD Burners and check the specs. The Plextor line is quite good and can duplicate most disks if thats what you need.

oddly enough i bought the yamaha i love the brand my stereo is all yamaha dsp a1) the burner i bought is 16x10x40 but i cant write above 8 or it errors out i have a 800 mhz pentium 400 ram and a defraged drive all my settings are right and i use adaptecs newest version of soft im very dissapointed

ZD Net, has Plextor as their pick for a 12/10/32 R/RW. Under $250, that's what I'm getting.

Hey y'all Here's the short and simple as I remember it(god I say that alot lately, must be gettin' old!) There are only actually 3 or 4 makers of CD drives whether plain vanilla CDs,CDRs,orCDRW. The rest are just liscensed for sale with another companies logo. I know that Yamaha is one and Plextor is one, they are also usually the top rated. If you can wait awhile or don't need blazing speed stick with the 12X speed the 16X are little quirky and don't quite live up to expectation. And even though IDE are great if you can get SCSI go for it, alot even include the SCSI card and I know firsthand that SCSI makes less "coasters"(I have an IDE HP and a, now defunct Smart and Friendly SCSI). Oh and the drive should have at least 2MB of buffer memory(pretty much thats standard). As far as the media, thats dependant on the drive, buy a drive and ask on there help forum or call tech support and ask what brand of disc works best, but regardless buy in bulk, they are much cheaper. Hope this helps. ZW

Go for the Plextor model. I work at a computer lab at an art school and we have about 90 computers w/ cdrw's, a mixture of 12-10-32 and 8-2-32 ide models of plextor drives. There was only 1 drive that failed in the past 9 months. And these drives are constantly used by students backing up dozens of render frames.

TRAVISB did you use cd-r's that were high speed capable? I know if you use a high speed burner and then burn onto slow speed cd-r's it errors out. How weird.

im using memorex high speed cdr rated 1 through 16

hmmm I tried to burn a copy of a game but it only would install it would not play the game kept asking for the correct disk, I rather use a copy because cdroms do scratch and can loose info that way if the scratch is bad enoughor the disk obtains multiple scratches on it from long term use. I know what the problem is, I am not able to copy the hidden files on the game disk that designate the cd id code. I wonder what it is I need to copy those files too.

Great response! Thanks all. Pinto

I have the Yamaha 16x10x40 and most of the time it will only burn at either 4 or 8 and the rest of the time it will error out also. I am extremely upset. My old burner which was a 4x, burned alot better than this 300.00 yamaha that dont work right. I also have a AMD thunderbird 1.1 gighert processor, adbit kt7 raid with the newest bios update, 384 megs p133 ram, and a defragged hard drive. The newest EZ cd Creator software also and CRWIN Software. I also have the firmware updates for the yamaha drive. I think Yamaha totally messed up on this drive!

Wow Jen, thanks for the heads up! I am starting to see some price reductions on this drive, (now at $199.00 with rebate at CompUSA) so that may be an indication it is not selling well because of problems. Thanks again Jen, I'll look at something else. Pinto

I just took the yamaha back today and got a TDK 16x10x40 and it works great so far. :) That yamaha was a piece of junk! Good luck getting a new burner :)

Attached Link: http://www.firestorm.ab.ca/labs/buyers_guide/cd.html