whats the worst cd burners you have used?

[liteonrules]

i would like to know peoples experiences with the worst cd burners ranging from 2x speed to whatever speed they have used and hated.

my second question is for IAN or whom ever tested several 52x speed burners only. what's the worst 52x speed burner?

i hated my ACER 2X2X6 BURNER AND MOST OF MY DISCS CAN'T BE READ TODAY. I ONLY USED ONE 52X SPEED BURNER AND THAT IS THE BENQ 52X24X52 5224P AND I LIKE IT SO FAR.

[CDRecorder]

The worst (actually, the only) 52x burner I have used would have to be the AOpen CRW5224. It didn't work well from the start (failed burns not infrequently), and it eventually entirely quit burning CD-RW discs. It was re-badged by a company that also sells Lite-Ons, so I asked them to replace it with the LTR-52246S that they also sell as the same model.

[BurninMan921]

Lite-On 48125W. Nothing but problems with. Worst burn quality I've ever seen, no matter what the media. Never hit 48x w/o errors either.

[dolphinius_rex]

The Worst: AOpen 40x12x48x drive. It died so many times I gave up on it... luckily it wasn't actually mine

The Best: Toss-up between my Yamaha 4x4x16x and my LiteON 48125W. Both have given me awsome quality burns and faithful service through literally THOUSANDS of burn processes each... however only the Yamaha withstood the test of time asnd lasted for over 6 years of heavy use... the LiteON is a little of 1 year old and still going strong!

[CDRecorder]

Lite-On 48125W. Nothing but problems with. Worst burn quality I've ever seen, no matter what the media. Never hit 48x w/o errors either.

What media and firmware did you use? I think my 48125W is one of the best burners I've ever used (my LTR-52327S isn't here yet, so I can't comment on it).

Liteonrules:
I don't have an overall least-favorite burner, but my overall least favorite brand is AOpen. My 32x AOpen did the same things as my 52x AOpen except that it never quit writing CD-RW discs. The other thing I didn't like about them was the "Speed boost" feature which actually meant that the read speed was limited to 40x unless I held down the eject button for four seconds.

[BurninMan921]

The firmware I used was whatever the latest was at that time (this being about Feb/Mar or so). The media:
Fuji 24x/40x (TY), Sony 32x, PNY 32x, Memorex (TY) 40x, Memorex (CMC) 48x, Fuji (TY) 48x, TDK 40x, TDK 48x.

Not a good burn at 48x with any disc. Tried some discs at 8x, and they were unreadable. The best burn quality was with the Fuji discs at 24x, but the Nero CD-Speed quality check was still erratic.

I'll be sticking with the Plextors 100% from now on; the LDW-401S I had for less than a day...although that was a pretty good burner. But not Plextor good.

[CDRecorder]

I'll bet you had a defective drive, BurninMan.

I'm glad that you've found some drives that you like, though!

[iconone]

Cendyne a bagged Lite-on 52246S could not get it to record .
Replaced with Micro Advantage no problems 1st disc,must have been defective.

[VEFF]

I have used a number of burners, starting with a Philips 2X going all the way up to a LiteOn 52X32X52X, and can honestly say that they all worked well for my needs.

The Philips external USB burner used to get very hot to the touch.
Thta is the only complaint, albeit minor, I can think of.

[BillyG]

I think the worst one was my first - a Yamaha 4X SCSI burner in the fall of 1997. Paid $399 for the thing and it would only burn on certain CD-R's bands (Verbatim, Ricoh and TY). I didnt know what the hell I was buying but someone told me they were more stable than a IDE drive so I shelled out more for one.

The Yamaha lasted a year and a half before it stopped working. Then I bought a Teac 8X ($230) which is now in my closet with a bunch of old motherboards and stuff) - then a Sony 12X ($150 after rebate) which was a good drive despite not having burn-proof. Its now doing work in my father's office PC.

Then after a excellent Plextor 24/10/40a (about $100 after rebate - now in the closet because it cant read some copy protected audio CD's) its been Lite-On's (40x12x40 -to- 52x32x52) all the way. The best drives I have used have been Lite-On's so far.

Its nice to think the prices have dropped so drastically over the past 4 years but the speed and quality have gone way up. Many thanks to Lite-On for making great drives and selling them for low low prices. In many ways they are the equivalent of AMD to Plextor's Intel. I cant find any 52X discs in my area yet - so the fastest I have burned has been a bunch of TY-Fujifims at 48X with no problems!

Too bad video cards havent done the same! Imagine buying a Radeon 9800 or Geforce 5 for just 20 dollars after rebate.

[CDRecorder]

Too bad video cards havent done the same! Imagine buying a Radeon 9800 or Geforce 5 for just 20 dollars after rebate.

That would be nice!

[RMerlin]

Old Mitsumis (various models).


- One died after the neighbour downstairs had a pretty loud New Years Eve party - and it wasn't reliable even before that anyway)

- Two out of four that we sold over the period of a year came back dead within a few months

[OC-Freak]

This post was for the worst, right? I'll give you both worst and best anyway

Worst: BenQ 4012P - just because it plain sucked , HP 8X (rebagged sony thing) - since it failed writing in 25% of the tests I did, returned it back after a week. Yamaha also fells into this category - as they do not last long and have a fan on the rear which gets damn noisy after about 6 months of use.

Best: First place goes to: Mitsumi CR-4804TE 4X, that damn thing just won't die....sold it to a friend which still use it, can't imagine how many discs this drive have written......probably somewhere close to 10000 discs. (I wrote a few thousand discs with it myself)...

Second place goes to all Lite-On drives I've had, for outstanding media compatibility and write quality as well as the nice price. As well as it's correct EFM capabilities and wide range of testprograms and firmware flashers.

And last: third place goes to plextor, for providing the PX-1210A drive with burnproof....gotta love burnproof in the days when only plextor PX-1210A had it...... And for providing high quality drives with a great bundle (plextools for example). They do not win the price for media compatibility though....

[CameraMan]

Worst: My Mitsumi 4x SCSI burner, bought in spring of 1998. It has I think a 512k buffer. On a P2-450 system, I couldn't have anything running while burning (ICQ was a bad thing). At the time it was leading edge, but now my mom has that system, doesn't burn anything. Just a CD reader.

Best: All my LG burners. I've got a 24x, two 40's and a 48x. I don't burn past 32x though, just to avoid data errors.

We'll See: My BenQ DW400A 4x4x12 DVD+RW. So far, so good, not a coaster yet.

Also have various DVD-ROMs, a few CD-ROMs, they all do the job.

[cnlson]

5 years of burning... multiple thousands of discs (20 so far tonight)

worst hp7200e (rebadged phillips crappy drive) digital research DR-CDRW401248EU (benq 4012eu) and the LG8400

best all the rest... the night i killed my teac r55s trying to use blindread/write it felt like i died. the rest (except one of the sanyo rw1's) are still doing bidness for whoever i sold/passed them to.

from my 12101b on liteon has been my bag. i have burned over 1000 cds with that drive alone.

my first 3 drives cost somewhere around $1300+ (7200e -$399 smart and friendly speedwriter 4012 $399+$142scsi card Plex 820ti $299 + $55 scsi card)
all of the rest together almost cost less than just one of those drives
52246s - $39 after rebate office max
48161h - $69 sams
40125s - $19 after rebate office max
12101b - $69 sams
401248eu - $60 best buy
LG8400 - $30 friend
rw8220 - $50 adamant.com
rocket rw - $100 after smart and friendly shut down.

i am down to 1300blanks now (office max free after rebate yeah!)
so i am starting to look at liteon dvd burners but i might have to wait a bit first...

[Halc]

Worst:

5+ years ago Yamaha SCSI 4x. Failed in less than a year (only burning on specific media)

4+ years ago HP ATAPI 4x. Started to fail with most media and burn quality problematic to begin with.

Ricoh MP-9120a ATAPI DVD/CDRW combo. Very high burn failure rate. Only accepts very limited number of media. Fails to read many burns that work flawlessly on other machines. Failed completely within 2 years (moderate use).

Yamaha CRW3200 USB 2.0 external. Regardless of positives, I've had two of these fail in c. 1,5 years with VERY light use (only a few dozen burned with each, no ripping or high speed reading).

Those are the worst offenders that I've faced.

[aviationwiz]

To be honest, my worst Burner so far has either been the LTR-48125W or the Aopen 48x12x50. My first HP 9300i (10x4x32) was an excellent drive for it's time, it was fast, and I only got Buffer Under-Run Errors with the first Acer disks I used, that were rated at 12x. My Premium, is awesome. LTR-48125W and Aopen 48x12x50 are just middle of the line drives.

[dolphinius_rex]

To be honest, my worst Burner so far has either been the LTR-48125W or the Aopen 48x12x50. My first HP 9300i (10x4x32) was an excellent drive for it's time, it was fast, and I only got Buffer Under-Run Errors with the first Acer disks I used, that were rated at 12x. My Premium, is awesome. LTR-48125W and Aopen 48x12x50 are just middle of the line drives.

That just means you haven't had any bad drives