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i've been looking at getting a cdrw drive and have ended up rather confused as to who makes what.

this is what i think right now

lg and liteon make there own drives
liteon makes drives for most anyone
asus and aopen might be the same drives, not sure

there are 4 drives im looking at (im in UK, so please dont start saying cendyne or use this voucher in this shop unless its over here) which are

LG8520, Liteon52246, SonyCRX220, AopenCRW5224.

Is there any reason to get the sony over the liteon? should i get the lg cos it matches my LG dvd, should i get the Aopen just to be different?

In fact, is there any reason to pick anyone of those drives over the others apart from price.

One small gnosis: As far as i know, Asus and Aopen don't sell similar drives.

the thing that is confusing me about the aopen/asus thing is they both seem to be called the crw5224. i havent been able to find a review of the aopen, and the asus is out of the running for price/availability reasons

As far as I know, the Sony drive is a rebadged LiteOn- so if you're looking at one of those, you can go by price.

The nice thing about LiteOn drives is the scan programs available: CD Doctor and K's Probe. Check these threads in this forum to see what they offer:
Official CD Doctor (WSES alternative) Thread
New Tool for Scanning C1C2/PIPO

G

My Top 3 Choices in Order
1. Lite-On LTR-52246S
2. Sony CRX220
3. LG 8520

Go with the one you can get the cheapest. I would stay away from AOpen when you can get a much better drive in a Lite-On or a LG.

I think that the Lite-On is better than the Sony because the Sony has specialized firmware which limits read/write speed to 40x by default. The Lite-On doesn't do this.

i read that the reason for this was that writing at 52x is pretty noisy, and u can turn it up at the touch of a button. i have to say that the 24x rw and mt rainer are more of an issue than the 52x write. the price difference between 48x and 52x is so small as for it to be ludicrous not get the faster drive, its not the big selling point.

i was considering the samsung 248 until i discovered it didnt have mt rainer compatability, which is why im now choosing between the drives i listed

Sony was also afraid of disc breakage.

That doesn't seem to be a big issue, though.

LiteOnGuy wrote:I think that the Lite-On is better than the Sony because the Sony has specialized firmware which limits read/write speed to 40x by default. The Lite-On doesn't do this.

You can flash the Sony CRX220 to a Lite-On LTR-52246S.
Use FlashFix on the Lite-On firmware and then you can apply it to your Sony drive.

Good point, BuddhaTB!

I think you should get the LG becuase itz quite, it supports Mt Rainer and it looks good.
I have had it for about a week and had no probs with it when upgraded to 1.04
itz your choice

Got a Verbatim 5224A, which is a Asus 5224A for $19
form Bestbuy last week. Seems to run ok

Gary

Can I just say, in defence of the Aopen drives, that they do seem to be better at burning low grade media than LiteOn.

For example some bad Ritek media (FWS, designated WD001, supposedly 48x compatible) I get 70% OK burns at 48x, and 100% OK at 40x with the Aopen 48x. With the LiteOn burner I struggle at 24x. In addition the Aopen will read these discs back at full speed whereas the LiteOn will not read them >32x without errors (regardless of how they were burned).

I've found this same problem with a number of bad media types that the LiteOn struggles with toward the end at high speed.

Generally the Aopen burns are lower quality (in terms of C1 count), but more consistent in my experience.

I've owned a few AOpen Burners in the past, and had really good success with them. In fact, you can read some reviews over @ BensCustomCases.

They are working on a 52/24/52 AOpen drive right now, and the review should be posted by the weekend.