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Hard drive and Cdrw drive questions

PostPosted: Wed Dec 10, 2003 2:23 pm
by Dragonmonkey
I was just wondering how long do hard drives usually last? I've had mine for a full 3 years and i'm planning to get a new one, probably the 120gb WD for $60 (AR). I was just reading some other posts and got kinda scared to hear ppl's hard drives were dying on them after around 3 yrs.

And now to a different topic, a cdrw question. I just bought the Mitsumi CR-485GTE(for only $30 cdn AR) and cant seem to burn faster than 24x. Could it just be a media prob? I've only tried 48x sonys- only went up to 16x and with 48x tdks(cmc) which would let me select 40x but would only go up to 24x and dropped to an average of 16x. I don't know much i'm basically a noob. I've read some other posts about dma and cdrw media. My dma is enabled. I wanted to try the ty fuji's but the only one's i could find were $80 at my university bookstore! So is the a media problem or is it my computer?

Thanks in advance for your help!

PostPosted: Wed Dec 10, 2003 7:39 pm
by TheWizard
From Ian's review of the Mitsumi CR-485FTE (which I'm assuming is a slightly older version of the CR-485GTE:

"The CR-485FTE's media requirements are some of the highest I've seen. Out of all of the test media we have here in the 'Labs, the discs from Plextor were the only ones that would work at 54x. I was able to choose the 54x writing speed for the rest of the media, but Mitsumi's AEGIS WRITE technology prevented the drive from actually reaching that speed. Without a 52x writing speed, the CR-485FTE was forced to write to the other media at 48x or less."

So, yes, I would try some new discs. Although, don't expect to record them at full speed, and also don't be surprised if you cannot record them at 48X. Just out of curiosity, what kind of computer are you using? If it is very old, then that could attribute to you not being able to reach full speed on your CD burner.

As for your hard drive inquiry, I've owned hard drives for well over 3 years and never had a problem with them. Granted, these are older drives to begin with, so maybe the construction quality was better, I don't know. Anyway, there is no set life for a hard drive. Some may die well after 3 years, some may die well before 3 years. Has it given you any signs of breaking down? You can usually tell when a hard drive is going to conk out on you (i.e. sporadic data loss, funny noises, etc).