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Have purchased both drives. Need to return one. The reviews give a close edge to the Lite On, but is the 8MB buffer in the Samsung something that should make me lean in that direction? Not sure just how important the buffer is.

Welcome to CDRLabs, Nickmm!

I would recommend that you keep the Lite-On drive. I would recommend this for several reasons.
1. The Lite-On drive supports disk quality checking software like KProbe.
2. The Lite-On drive supports writing at 32x whereas the Samsung only supports 24x.
3. I have heard that the Lite-On has better media compatibility than the Samsung.

If your computer is slow enough that it will have to pause the burn until the buffer refills, having an 8-MB buffer shouldn't make much of a difference. I have heard that having a larger buffer may cause packet-writing to be faster on slower computers, but I really don't know if that is true.

Even if your puter is fast and you multi-task a lot while burning, then the 8MB buffer will come in handy. All in all though, even if you multi-task a lot and burn with a 2MB buffer burner, it'll be fine. Just make sure buffer underrun protection is enabled.

So, bottom line, the choice is yours. Have you actually tried both drives? If so, pick the one you liked more from your tests.

I like 8mb buffer too, but you should absolutely keep the Litey !!

I like the 8MB buffers on the Samsung's too. Unfortunately their new 52/32/52 CD-RW only has a 2MB buffer.