Hi Marc,
I have recently purchased an external DVD writer for my tugable. I
selected a Plextor drive (PX-716UF) because of its 8MB buffer and
advanced features. Be sure to use the most recent firmware version if
you select that drive. Newer drives had been announced from Plextor (see
http://plextor.com) and I believe the current external model is
PX-716UFL (in case you can live without a cup holder).
Last time I looked the price of DVD-R DL media was much higher than the
price of two DVD-R media (similar for the DVD+R and DVD+R DL media).
Hence, for me at least, the double layer media is not there yet. It is a
nice feature to have in the drive when the price becomes competitive,
but I stick with the mainstream solution (DVD-R) for now. I use well
known media brands recommented for my drive: TDK and Verbatim.
My approach for DVD writing has been to select quality media and a
quality writer. After all there is only that many copies of one's
offline digital images. As some IT professionals says: One copy is no copy!
Many external DVD writers supports both USB 2.0 and FireWire. I use
FireWire as my tugable has an idle FireWire slot. And the Linux version
that I use has better support for FireWire than USB 2.0.
One thing often overlooked by newcomers (like myself) to DVD writing is
the required disk bandwidth for DVD writing. I generally write at 4x
which is 5.540 KB/sec. That can be quite a challenge for an older system
like mine (1 GHz, 256 MB RAM, 20 GB disk), especially when there is many
small files on the disk. Fortunately scanned images are quite large and
RAW images from my 10D are quite large as well. Due to disk space
constraints I have to master the DVD media while it is written instead
of creating the DVD image first. Mastering while writing is also faster
than making an image first, specialy for single disk systems.
There is an ongoing competition between the DVD-R and DVD+R media types.
I have chosen DVD-R media bacause it is the classical format. Others may
choose DVD+R. The DVD-RW and DVD+RW media types are nice to have for
experiments and for moving files between systems, but for backup and
archiving DVD-R and DVD+R is the format of choice. Most modern DVD
writers supports all these media types.
Don't forget CD-R media. They are cheap, can be read almost everywhere
and is a little cheaper than DVD media.
Hope this helps!
Cheeers,
Klaus
> Subject: [OM] Buying an external DVD burner (mostly OT)
> Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 16:48:47 +1100
> From: "Marc Lawrence" <mlawrence@xxxxxxxxxx>
>
> As the subject says, I'm planning on buying an
> external DVD burner. The prompting for this is
> actually the apparent, sudden failure of the
> Lite-on CD-burner that came with my HP PC to be
> able to download audio CD's to my PC (for subsequent
> loading to my iPod). The tracks play hop, skip
> and jump, no matter which software I use to do
> so (and you can hear the CD player seemingly
> struggling - stopping/starting - as it tries to
> read them). I'm not sure if this is the CD-burner,
> the drivers, the OS, or what, though I've spent a
> while Googling for solutions.
>
> Anyway, as I say, it's "prompting", as I was
> thinking of getting a DL DVD-burner for the
> purposes of data (read "photos") backup anyway.
>
> Thus, are there any specific recommendations people
> have. From what I have seen a LaCie D2 DL 16x
> gets reasonable raps, and I've priced it around the
> traps, but I'd appreciate second opinions and
> alternatives.
>
> Cheers, and thanks in advance,
> Marc
> Sydney, Oz
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