What Kind of CD/DVD Drive Do I Want?

[PsyCho_BoB]

Something good, reliable, black, and most importantly cheap. I don't know, but can you get a cd/dvd/cd burner all in one drive? What is the RW drive?
What do the +/- things mean?
Some good brands?

Oh ya, any suggestions on a floppy drive (also black)?

 

[mrzeeedler]

Flopppy doesnt really matter but heres one in black.
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=21-103-116&depa=0

Also your looking for dvd cd burner. The r means writeable, the rw means rewriteable so you can use almost like a floppy disc. Yah you can get them all in one. Right now you may have heard about dual layer format out. It takes double layer discs and allows up to 8hours on 1 disc and 8gbs of space. Where the normal are only half that. However these burners are about 170 bucks or so and the discs are 13 bucks if you can find them. Also the + and - means the kind of disc. There is 2 diffrent discs which are + and -. some burners only do 1 of those some do both, you want that does both like this.

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=27-131-226&depa=1

 

[Ankush09]

yeah... + has better quality burning then -.

 

[Dante]

I've seen better articles, but this one here seems quite useful.

 

[Dante]

Info on the various manufacturers and which format they support; http://www.webopedia.com/DidYouKnow/Hardware_Software/2003/DVDFormatsExplained.asp

As mrzeeedler says, go for a + and - drive and if you get DVD-RAM thrown in all the better..

Edit: DVD-RAM is essentially like being able to drag and drop in Windows Explorer but onto a DVD instead. Similar to Roxio's Direct CD which does the same with CDs.

 

[PsyCho_BoB]

Would it be cheaper to get a dvd/cd drive and cd burner separate? I mean, don't I need 2 drives to copy something from 1 disk onto another?

 

[Ankush09]

No you dont need 2 drives, If you are making an exact copy, you put in the cd with the data first, copmuter reads all data, and when u put in the blank cd, computer writes it onto the cd.

 

[mrzeeedler]

No you only need 1 drive to copy something from on the to other. With 2 drives it will make it faster. At that point I reccomend getting a dvd-rom and a dvd rw/cd rw. So you have 2 drives.

 

[PsyCho_BoB]

So all drives that burn can also read dvd/cds too? So it would be cheaper to just get 1 drive? I mean this is for the occasional burn, I don't do this often at all.

 

[mrzeeedler]

Yah it would be cheaper if you dont burn too much,