CD-writer waredown???

[BMF]

How quickly does a CD-writer ware down?
I've heard as short as 6 months. What's the deal?

[smokin1]

My understanding from the vendor when I bought mine was that I could realistically expect about 300 burns...I figured I could live with that.
http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif

[grandslammer]

You mean the CD, or the burner? I think 300 would most likely get here quicker than you'd think!

Hmm.Well, would it just need re-aiming or something? Could a tech service and adjust at that point?

I want one of these soo bad, but... hmmm...

Something to think about, huh?

Mike

[Mntsnow]

Well I can tell you from my personal experiance. My plextor 8x burner has already done maybe 7-800 burns and still works as good as the day I got it. I have a 4x4x24 phillips burner that has 150-200 burns thru it and still going strong. and at work we have a 4x yamaha burner that I bet has gone well over a 1000 burns and still going strong!......If you buy a cheap burner then maybe you will only get 300-500 burns out of it.

Mntsnow

[smokin1]

Sorry..it was the burner I was referring to..it really only works out to about .75 cents per burn on top of the cost of a blank
CD..so still not bad...no where near that many on mine...
http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

[smokin1]

Didn't know you were posting at the same time
Mntsnow...maybe I was given a low expectation so it could easily be exceeded..lol
http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif

[Target]

I agree with Mntsnow...quality of the burner has a lot to do with how long you can expect it to last.

My Plextor has done in excess of 500 burns as well, and still works as if it was new!

[BBA]

Hmmmmm....I used my 2X Mitsumi for about 2 years, probably 500 or so burns and it still works as good as new.

And thats a cheapy burner.

I'm not gonna worry about how long my Yamaha's gonna last.

[BMF]

Thanks for all the info.
My CD burner is a Hewlet Packard 2X, I got it really cheap (200 $)
I've only done 2 burns so far, but it's still going strong!
Is that a good burner? How long do you think it'll last?

[Wiz]

i have the 2x HP burner, the 7500 series. I love this baby, i have never had a coaster and i have been using it at least 4-5 times a week for the last year.

[Smokey]

My HP 7100 was a ***** until I updated it with Philip firmware... I couldn't trust it to burn data through DirectCD correctly, but now it works perfectly with the new firmware. I figure I've done about 30 - 50 burns in 4 months... and it seems to work great after the firmware update. This burner was $150 (nice and cheap)...

[alondra]

couple questions, I know a CD holds a lot of information, can you put lots of diferent things on the same disk, also being a nuts and bolts guy I wonder how they work, keep hearing about burning CDs I picture a little bitty torche burning little groves . maybe a lazer or some thing. and can yor re record over them? like a floppy.

[mattheadfat]

i don't use a burner but i'm thinking of getting one, as i understood it, you can reformat a rewritable disk and write over it over and over again and this guy at my school was telling me that when using a rewritable disk, that you can't format the disk, but just write more than once, so if you you burn a 300mb file on it, you can still burn another 355mb on it, and that you can erase the data, but can't write over it again, is this true, i was pretty sure he was wrong, but i want to make sure before i punch him.

thanks, matt

[Wiz]

there are 2 basic burners, CD-Rs, and CD-RWs.

CD-Rs are used to record a cd one time, a cd-r cannot burn a cd adn then erase it, so if you burn something, its there for good. These are best used for music. This is also called recording, a 1 time thing.

CD-RWs are different kind of burner, they can burn things, and then erase them and re-burn. These cds are made for long term storage of data. Note: CD-RWs can also burn CD-Rs. This is also called writing, which can be rewritten.

When you see a burner marked 8x4x32x it means that it burns, or records, at 8x speed. It writes at 4x and reads cds at 32x.

you need different CDs to use a CD-R. or CD-RW. CD-RW discs cannot be read by music cd-players.

[tapeworm]

thanks, although i didn't need all the detail

[bdog]

At work we have an old scsi burner, not sure of brand, but it has over a thousand burns. It is slow but works great.

[bdog]

Oh yeah, I forgot to add this, my ISP told me about a hival burner they bought to put their connection software on cd's for customers. They said it made about 25 burns then died. They exchanged it, and the next one did about the same. I guess you get what you pay for.

[Dreamboat Annie]

In response to mattheadfat's question, here is a wonderful FAQ site on CDROM/R/RW drives.
http://www.fadden.com/cdrfaq/

It answers just about every question you can think of on the subject. It also says that some CD players can read CD/RW disc (section 2-11). However not all of them do.