Capabilities? New Drive?

Newbie Forum
#1

Hello…

Mega Noob here… My wife has this older dell computer with a dvd player on it… How can I find out if it has burning capabilities? Is there a program that will tell me what this drive is capable of?

New drive? I want to get a new drive for my computer. I heard that now is a good time becuase of something like blueray or dL or something.

Anyway should I try to find a drive with blueray or dl? I want to get a drive that is like the best for all things… does this drive exist? I read over some forum posts and heard things like don’t get this drive if you want to scan … dont get that drive if you want burn well what does scanning mean? Why would someone want a drive that couldnt burn?

Thanks in advance … sorry for the noobler questions … if you have any suggestions on a drive also I’d be thankful … maybe some points on why you would suggest it.

#2

Welcome to the forum :slight_smile:

Yes, Nero Info tool. :slight_smile: http://telecharger.yacapa.com/telechargement/Disque+dur+CD+Rom+DVD/Nero+Info+Tool-33005.html

New drive? I want to get a new drive for my computer. I heard that now is a good time becuase of something like blueray or dL or something. Anyway should I try to find a drive with blueray or dl?
All recent burners do DL, only cutting-edge drives do Blue-Ray, and they’re hard to find. The media itslef is not widely available. Forget it until it becomes more widely spread and cheaper.
I want to get a drive that is like the best for all things… does this drive exist?
Short answer: no. :bigsmile:
I read over some forum posts and heard things like don’t get this drive if you want to scan … […]what does scanning mean?
Performing tests, called PIE/PIF tests, that are supposed to indicate the burning quality. This is a controversial subject, and is not an exact science as all drives report different figures in these tests.
Why would someone want a drive that couldnt burn?
Uh? :confused: Me no understand question. All burners can burn… :wink:

My personal suggestion: any recent burner from LG or Pioneer will be fine for your burning needs, and the Benq 1650/55 drives. All these are fine drives with very high burning quality. If you want to perform PIE/PIF tests as well, go for a Benq. But be prepared for many headaches if you start scanning your discs, it’s a time-consuming, complicated, challenging hobby. :bigsmile:

So my own advice is: use exclusively premium media (genuine Verbatim for example), avoid fingerprints and dust, and forget about “scanning”. To be on the safe side, you can check your burnt discs with a [I]transfer rate test[/I] that will tell you if the data is fully and easily retrievable. All drives allow you to perform such a test. You can use Nero CDSpeed to perform these transfer rate tests. A perfect reading curve with no dips shows there’s nothing wrong with your burn.

There is a full “how to” CDSpeed guide in the blank media forum (testing section).

Good luck :slight_smile:

#3

Thank you very much for your response sir have a wonderful day.

#4

Newer liteon drives are decent too as well as the ones Francksoy recomended too. To add a little, for those of us that have several burners it might be worth keeping a drive that may not be the best in some areas because it is good in other areas. For instance I have an aopen burner that is a pretty lousy dvd burner but it is a very strong reader (reads scratched disk etc that other drives wont). Its also a good cd burner, and I don’t care that it is not that great of a dvd burner as I have other drives that are. I think what you might have read might have been something along the lines of a particular drive not being the best for a certain kind of burning rather than not being able to burn at all (unless it is a dvd rom which there can be a few advantaged to, but not if it is your only drive).
On the blueray thing, it is not dvd. It is a new format that can hold a lot more data than dvd, but like Francksoy said, I would forget about it for now unless you have a small fortune to throw away on equipment that isn’t even that well standardized and not really even fully functional yet in some cases. Its too new of technology and there are lots of problems with it.