The Time has come to Retire the Plex - Now What?

[-Jim-]

Folks,

My Plextor PX-716 is now starting to burn very poorly on both CDs & DVD+Rs.

(I have a BenQ DW1655 that I usually just use for Scans of the Plex disks and to disk quick copies)

90% of the time I'm burning TDK +R Media (CMC MAG M01) with a smattering of Maxell (Ritec R03), Fuji +Rs, etc. I never had much luck with DL burning, not that I tried it very often on either drive.

So I guess I'm in need of a decent Burner. I'm certainly not "up" on current Models anymore so can you offer some suggestions?

I've noticed an imergence of LG and Samsung in my marketplace and wonder if they are truely the leaders these days. You can get a LG GH22NP20 PATA, or a LG GH22NS30 (Black) 22x SATA, or a Pioneer DVR-116D (Black) 20x PATA for ~$30 and a Samsung SH-S202J or a Liteon IHAS220 20x SATA for a few bucks more around here. A Samsung SH-S223F SATA Drive is about the same. Ditto for a n Asus DRW-20B1LT. (A far cry from what the Plex cost a few years ago! )

Both of my current drives are PATA (IDE) but I wonder if a move to SATA is desireable? My Motherboard (Asus P5N32-E SLI) has only one IDE Bus but lots (6) of SATA connections. (I only use 3 for Hard Drives.) I may be desirable to plug in an old IDE Hard Drive from time to time.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks for the assist.

[Ian]

If your motherboard is new enough (and I'm guessing it is if it has 6 SATA connections), there's really no reason not to buy an SATA drive.

Unfortunately, there isn't one drive that does it all well. Most will burn single layer media just fine, but very few handle DL media well.

I'm kind of partial to Samsung drives these days. I haven't tested their 22x drives yet (I have one.. just no time) but their 20x writers were pretty good. The LG's had some writing quality issues when writing at 22x and I'm not sure if they've released a firmware update to fix that yet.

[-Jim-]

Ian,

Thanks for the reply. Has this site compared similar Samsung or LGs with both connection types?

( LG GH22NP20 Vs. LG GH22NS30 or Samsung SH-S202J Vs. Samsung SH-S223Q)

Should I assume this generation of Drives are technically better than the soon to be retired Plextor PX-716?

Do any of them allow disk quality scans with Nero or ?

[SithTracy]

There will probably never be an quality optical drive available for the average consumer like the Plextor. I still have my PX-716A and a PX-755SA, but they see very limited use. I use my Samsung SH-S203B and Pioneer DVR-215 as my everyday drives. Optical drives are dirt cheap these days and I am pretty sure that is why Plextor quit the business and just sell someone else's re-badged drives today.

[Ian]

( LG GH22NP20 Vs. LG GH22NS30 or Samsung SH-S202J Vs. Samsung SH-S223Q)

No, not yet. At least in Samsung's case, they are essentially the same. The only real difference is the connection type.

I believe that Pioneer and Optiarc drives can do write quality scanning, but they're not real accurate. I think samsung's can too, but you have to do some registry hacking to get it to work with CD Speed.

I'm waiting to see what Lite-On does with their drives. They've already done a lot of development for Plextor's PlexUtilities so it would not surprise me if they came out with their own software suite that did some of those things.

[DrageMester]

Posts by Karr (the author of KProbe) over at CDFreaks makes me think he has been involved in development of PlexUTILITIES.

http://club.cdfreaks.com/f43/plexutilit ... ost2163599

[-Jim-]

Gents,

There was a Sale on a Samsung SH-223F (SATA) at one of my local Computer Stores over the weekend, and I couldn't resist trying this drive out for $18.65 US.

So I grabbed it and have burned a few disks with decent results (but not the spectactular like the Plex when new).
I think this drive is more Media sensitive than the Plex so I guess I'll go looking for some cheap media that gives me 90%+ Quality on Nero Drive Speed.

[Ian]

Posts by Karr (the author of KProbe) over at CDFreaks makes me think he has been involved in development of PlexUTILITIES.

http://club.cdfreaks.com/f43/plexutilit ... ost2163599

Yes, I can confirm that he has been working on it.

Wow.. that's a great deal Jim. Let us know how the drive works for you.

[SkaarjMaster]

Samsung (SATA) could be my next burner as well to replace my BenQ DW1655. Which Samsung SATA is the best available in the US right now? How does it compare to that new Pioneer SATA drive?