Looking for good CD Writer.

[jamesglewisf]

Does anybody have a good external CD writer--preferably one that works off a USB port?

[TTP]

All the ones I have or had have been internal. I am not really a big fan of USB right now. Infact I do not own anything that runs off USB. I did have a Plextor 8X burner, but have went down to a 6X.

[jamesglewisf]

I've read a lot of good things about Plextor drives. Right now they have one that eliminates the buffer overruns. I'm leaning toward it.

[TTP]

I have no complaints at all with the Plextors I've had. They are a little pricey I think. I wanted to get a 12X at the time I got the 8X, but they only had it in a SCSI and it was lots of dough...
BTW, I've never had a problem with buffer overruns...I like Plextor.

[utah007]

TTP is right on, Plextor makes the best drives. Period. They are the leader hands down in speed, quality and reliability... You pay for it too, but in my experience, they are well worth it.

[TTP]

{wavey}
Hey Utah!
Hey now that he's here. It was his plextor, but my feeling about it are still the same. I just think it sounds like you don't have a brain of your own if you say, "Well my friend this and that and this and that." So, Utah is the brains behind this out-fit.
Welcome buddy!

[utah007]

Thanks man. I just have no life and like to read hardware reviews... if you want to know my secrets, or you just want to read some good reviews, http://www.tomshardware.com has the best site on the web for hardware reviews... In my humble opinion of course... :)

[jamesglewisf]

I have to travel at least once a month. While I'm at the airport, I stock up on whatever PC magazines they have and do my reading. I also have subscriptions to eWeek and The Standard. I'll have to check out Tom's. Thanks for the tip, utah007.

[TTP]

I read Tom's all the time. Every since we worked at that one place...icky!
I found a site that actually had some bad stuff about Tom, said his reviews were stacked and that some of his info was bogus. As soon as I get off work I'll link ya in to it, but I've got to run or I'll be late again!
*Runs to shower*

[utah007]

Please do, I'm always up for a laugh!
I've heard controversy around him before, from what I've read its all sounded like jealousy or people upset with a bad review... But I've verified his findings before by looking up othere hardware reviewers... Also he's painstakingly meticulous in making sure the platforms are even... Also he's the one that cracked the can of worms open about Intel's PIII 1.13 Ghz processor that was defective. Everyone knows AMD rules!

[blinc]

Oh boy! 3 Geeks in one room!

Don't take that the wrong way now... you can ask TTP, Geeks are my new favorite people in the whole world! Someday I aspire to being called a geek myself. Alas, I'm still working on even getting awarded the "G" in the word. TTP's been a tremendous help with all the questions the hubby and I have dumped on him. Poor guy, we (ok, mostly me) have pestered him to death with questions. But now... oooh, there's 3 of ya!

We have a built in CD burner into our Pavillion. It's a... erm, let me go find the paperwork. Well, the only thing I can find is that it's a 8x4x32 Max CD-RW Drive and a 48x Max. Speed CD ROM Drive. It was something we had added to the Pavillion package.

Utah007 is the "AMD" an Athlon(R) processor? We went with the 700 MHz Athlon because it sounded like it had the best potential. Think that was a good choice?

Can anyone recommend a good book that explains how these things work? It took until about a month or so ago, to figure out how to make a CD! I know there's lots more I should know about this - but the little bit of instructions that came with it, are really skimpy on details. We've bought a couple books - but neither one have any info on CD-RW stuff. Heeeeelllp! :)

[utah007]

*lets out low whistle*
That's a pretty good burner... 8x 4x 32 means that means it writes at 8x, rewrites at 4x, and reads at 32... Then the 48 read is a separate cd-rom...
Not bad at all...
Yes the Athlon is made by AMD... It is the most advanced PC processor on the planet...
I don't know of any books to read that would tell you how to burn, other than the um... user's manual.. ;)
Hmm, however if you want to find out about Computer hardware in general, look for PC Architecture for Dummies... Or you can read online reviews like on Tom's Hardware, or you can pick our brains clean... :)

[jamesglewisf]

utah007-->What software do you use to burn CD's?

[blinc]

OOoooh! I can pick your brains too? {toothy}

I'll most definitely look for that book! The darned thing didn't come with an owners manual for the CD burner... just a basic thing on the computer itself. I imagine there must be one in the programming software somewhere... but I haven't found it yet! Arrrgh!

Well, I've got one question right off the bat? This just happend while I was trying to save some pictures to disc the other day. When I right clicked on the pictures file, it said it had 55 MB of data in the file. I saved it to a CD-RW disc, which said it can store up to 650 MB's. After I saved it to the disc, I put the disc into the other drive to see if it copied right. It did - but a pie chart type thing came up that said the disc was full. Said 650 mb used, 0 availbe free space. Out of curiosity, I tried adding more to the disc - it added it on no problem. It's still saying the disc is full. I'm just wondering if there is a way to find out how much is REALLY stored on a disc and if you know why it might be saying it's full, when it's not?

I'll have to check out Tom's site... most of the sites use terms that are WAY over my head. I need a Geekanese translator book! {toothy}

So glad we went with the Athlon processor - sounds like we got one thing right!

[utah007]

you just caught me as I was headed out the door.
in answer to your question...
Go into your burning software and look at CD info or something similar, it will tell you how much data is left on the cd... In windows however since it can't write to the cd-r directly it will show the disk as full, even if it isn't...

[blinc]

Well see... that's a relief to know that right there! I didn't know windows would read a disc as full even if it wasn't. Whew! Was worried there was something wrong with the thing. Thank you! :)

I'll have to do some poking around and see if I can find the other way to read it, as you suggested. Thank you 007! :)

007... Utah 007... shaken, not stirred? *chuckle* I'd call ya, "James... Utah James..." but not sure if I'd get whapped or not! {toothy}

[utah007]

:)
Yeah I'm such the clever one huh... *laugh*

[utah007]

I use Adaptech Easy CD Creator... However there is a feature on the Nero burning suite that I want to try... I think I have a copy of it as well. But the nero CD to CD copies everything, errors and all...

[blinc]

Well I think TPP is a genius and he seems to think you are, so yup. I'd definitely go with clever too! {toothy}

[TTP]

If you think I'm a genius, then yep you could refer to him as...Einstien.

[utah007]

*blushes and shuffles feet*
Nah... TTP exaggerates... I'm just a simple guy, honest!

[blinc]

Yuh huh... that's what the smart one's say when trying to make us computer idiots feel better! {toothy}

So should we call you Einstein 007? Einstein-Utah?
Just pickin' on ya! hee hee

[TTP]

He thinks he can decieve me...heh...I know you better than that Einstein!

[utah007]

Yeah right, I WISH!

[blinc]

Have another question for ya. I took a bunch of songs off a variety of cd's, put the one's I like best on a playlist. Bill made me a CD of the favorites list, so that I could listen to them on a cd player. He did the same for his favorites list. About the first 15 minutes of both cd's have a rather fast thumping noise in the background. Then the rest of the cd sounds fine. Any ideas what it could be?

[TTP]

Might be trying to burn them to fast?
Kick it down to a slower speed and see it that helps. True it will take longer, but the quality will be better.

[blinc]

ookaay, would you have any idea how to slow it down? Could you walk us through that? We're using the Winamp CD writer I think. After listening to it again, it sounds more like it's cutting in and out, almost a skipping/staticy noise. If that helps. However, it's only at the beginning of the cd's.

One more thing (doncha just love us *grin) some of the songs are recording really fast, like 20 seconds, and some are taking about 3&1/2 to 4 minutes. Some of the songs that are taking a long time to record are coming out just as messed up. We seem to be having a problem with one of our speakers... kinda doubt that would have anything to do with the recording problems, but thought I'd throw that at ya just in case.

Could it possibly have anything to do with using 80 minute CD-R discs?

Ok, we'll quit pestering ya now. {toothy}

[TTP]

Winamp Cd Writer? I have not seen or used that one. Double check for me and I'll go see if I can find it.

The shorter the song the faster it should write. I'm not sure if that is what you are talking about. The speakers shouldn't cause a problem, unless of course they are the cause of the fluctuation...have you tried the cd in another player with different speakers?

It really just sounds like a buffer problem.

[blinc]

{toothy} Ooooh, this is going to be fun. Bill said to tell ya you're dealing with an idiot over here. (his words, but fun to write!).

okay, we have the Winamp Player, 2.71. When you click on the upper left corner, it comes up with a screen that says:
Nullsoft Winamp and a bunch of options on a dropdown screen. When you click on "Visualization" you can go to "Select Plug-In". That pulls up another screen (split screen) with more options. Under the main heading of "Plug-In's" go to the "OutPut" options. It then pops up four options in the right screen. Bill used the Nullsoft Disk Writer Plug-In v1.0 (x86) etc. when you click on that it asks if you want to record from there. He clicked yes and it started recording the song to disk. Then it goes through a test and it came back saying "no errors occured during session" (or something to that effect).


Bill wants to know what to do to fix a buffer problem. {toothy}
Hey TTP! Where ya running off to? TTP?

[TTP]

Well ya learn something new everyday. I've used winamp for over two years and never knew it could do that.

Since I'm horrible at explaining things I'm going to supply a link to a FAQ on plextor's homepage. Although you may not have a plextor drive, what is said here goes for pretty much all cd/rw drives. Just ignore the bottom paragraph.

http://www.plextor.com/english/support/plexhelper/scsi/faq%5Fscsie.html

I'm still looking at the winamp part though, it doesn't seem to be working for me...eeep! You sure you want to listen to me?

[blinc]

Hey cool. Thank you! We do have an Adaptec CD creator that came installed on the computer, but for some reason, it won't record certain songs off our playlist. Winamp will record anything, but having the problems with the audio. Someone *cough* is dying to take over the computer to go visit that site, so I'll sign off now. Thank you so much for the help TTP. We'll let you know how it goes! :)

[TTP]

Someone? Now who could that be? {anon}
I hope you find something usefull there.

[blinc]

We did and thank you so much for giving us that link. Bill made a cd last night and it turned out perfectly! Now, if he can just remember the steps on how to do it... ;)

[TTP]

{mm}
That's good news!

[blinc]

I've got another question... Yes, I know, they're never-ending! ;)

Here lately when we've been putting a cd in, the cd player or drive has been making strange noises. It slows way down, sometimes stops but then kicks back in. Almost a grinding noise, but not quite... Do these things need cleaning kits like VCR's do? *don't laugh*

If it needs to be replaced, how does that work? Do you take in your whole tower or what? Do you know about what it runs to have your drivers replaced?

[TTP]

Some drives do tend to make a little noise. There are cleaning kits you can buy for them, I usually just go to WalMart and the electronics section. Usually I won't clean the lense unless it is having problems reading the cds. Which might be what it is doing when it is speeding up and down, but cleaning it may or may not help. Kinda doubt it, but it sure won't hurt it.
Different companies have different types of warranties. Some they allow you to send the computer in, some they just send you the parts, others you have to take it to an ASC, Authorized Service Center, it all depends. The best way to tell is to take a look at your warranty and make sure to read the real small print that they always take you with. If it does need replaced and it is under warranty, it shouldn't cost you a thing. If however you are not under warranty...for a cd/rw drive...I'ld say it could cost $300-350 or even higher depending on the drive you want to put in and how much the people charge to put it in for you.

[blinc]

Yikes! That's a good chunk of change for something we've not used that much. Warranty... warranty.... ok, have got to get out the magnifying glass and read that little critter.

[TTP]

They can be expensive, most of the cost will probably be in installation if it's not under warranty. I found just a regular 40x Plextor (good drive) for $99 just now and it was from an expensive vendor...atleast it sounds kind of high. That one would not write, so you couldn't burn cds.
I honestly don't know if anything is really wrong though. Unless it is clanking of will not read your cds, I'm not sure I'ld worry about a little noise variation. You should hear these things around here! Buzz up and down...sound like there is a nest of bees or something! {toothy}