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hey guys im looking to finally get a DVD drive and read the review posted below of the 10 dvd drives and I have a couple of questions. I see that the AOpen 1648AAP was pretty much the top on almost every one of them, but it says it doesnt support DVD-RAM. What is it and is it important to have support for that? I dont need anything to rip DVD's at lightning speeds, but I like to get advice from people who know about the drives so im not having to replace the drive in a few months. Id like one that has great performance as far as reading and installing games and will still last a while. Any ideas? Also what would be a good DVD writer to go along with the ROM drive? Any help is appreciated. Thank you

The price of DVD writers have come down a lot over the past few years so most manufacturers are phasing out DVD-ROM drives. That being said, you many just want to skip buying one and get a DVD writer instead.

well i might just get both in case I want to copy a DVD backup or something.

Honestly, you're probably going to get better performance from a pair of DVD writers. If you really want to get a DVD-ROM though, I'm sure someone can recommend a decent one. I think ASUS has a few decent ones.

so what do you think would be a good pair of DVD writers?

Latest Pioneer 115 or whatever version it is now and a Samsung S203b might be a good combo. Some of the LG drive burn nicely as well but they don't update firmware very often if at all. SATA is the way to go if you have enough open ports.

nice, i have 8 lol

Ian wrote:If you really want to get a DVD-ROM though, I'm sure someone can recommend a decent one. I think ASUS has a few decent ones.

Aloha Ian! We also are looking for just a Reader for older system w/ little to no DVD burning capabilities. However, we need it to be able to read DVD-RAM. We think that the ASUS DVD-E616A3 will do that, but are there any others? Is ASUS the only brand with DVD-ROM that will read DVD-RAM? Even more important, are there any DVD Combo drives that can read DVD-RAM? Since we think ASUS Rom drives will read RAM, do they make a combo drive that will also read RAM? I know this 'ole system will at least burn CDs - a DVD-RAM reading combo drive would be great!

Thank you very much for any info you can give.

I think the Liteon 166 would read RAM, I know one of them did but it's been a while since any of mine have been plugged in. I'm not even sure if they still sell them but they were quite popular for a while so you might be able to still find good used or old stock new ones.
OK just looked up the LiteOn USA website and they do list a new drive that dooes dvd and RAM http://us.liteonit.com/us/index.php?opt ... &Itemid=99

Hmm, weird this came up as a new reply to one of my subscribed threads and now that I look it seems last reply was over a year ago so I doubt anyone is till looking for a dvd drive now but that info is supposedly current if anyone wanders in here.

Yeah, some signature spammer made a post here and I deleted it.