MadMerc wrote:I know i started a thread about which 52x24 to buy, pretty much a lg vs liteon question, but since then i discoverd that the plextor comes with a 2yr warranty unlike everyone elses 1yr. given the amount of cdrom drives i have had go bad on me, this is quite a big selling point, even given the big price premium on the plextor.
anything else i should be aware of before i buy?
Do not buy a Plextor 48x24x48 drive. I had 3 of these drives and they all had defects. The first Plextor 48x24x48 drive, which was TLA #0000, had excessive noise--it sounded like a jet engine. Compared to the noise that my rebadged LiteOn LTR-52246S drive (which replaced the Plextor 48X in my machine) makes, the first Plextor drive was *much* louder. The early Plextor 48X drives (as I found out after buying the drive) had an unbalanced disc/excessively loud seek problem, that Plextor was aware of and admitted to some hardware website. I returned the first drive to the vendor who sold it to me, and bought the second drive from a retail store here in the U.S. This drive intermittedly failed to write to/full erase 24X CD-RW discs. So I, after going through hell with Plextor tech support, got Plextor to return the second drive and give me a third drive. The third drive did the same thing as the second drive. Both the 2nd and 3rd Plextor 48X drives I had were relatively quiet, so they didn't have the excessive noise problem the first drive had.
In short, please do not buy this drive. Plextor quality has gone down the toilet. Someone who buys a Plextor spends the extra money required to buy a Plextor to get better quality and reliability. Instead, when you get a Plextor these days, you get an overpriced piece of junk. I replaced the last Plextor 48X drive (I only ever wanted one CD-RW drive) with a TDK 5200B CD-RW drive--this is the rebadged LiteOn LTR-52246S unit I mentioned above. This drive is superb in quality and performance and costs significantly less than the Plextor 48X drive. I recommend buying any LiteOn LTR-52246S drive--regardless of whether the drive is a real LiteOn, or a rebadged LiteOn. You can easily get a real LiteOn LTR-52246S drive in a retail kit here in the U.S.--I'm sure you can do the same in the U.K. So remember, don't buy the Plextor!! Buy the LiteOn LTR-52246S instead.