Storage Hard-wearing DVD Burner if it's the only drive?

I wouldn't touch nVidia's storage drivers with a 50ft barge pole. The other chipset/system drivers of course are a must.

 

As far as I can recall the 223F got some pretty good reviews. The problem with Samsung/Toshiba drives is that they vary the internal electronics a lot, yet only change the letter. This means you can end up buying a drive you believe is ace, when actually only the name resembles the model you really wanted.

The SH-223, for instance, comes in four models: B, L, F and Q. You'd be hard pressed to tell the actual difference between the drives by checking their specs. Have a look at the website and see if you can make head or tails of the information. Incidentally, they seem to do 4 versions of almost all their drives...

 

Oh aye, nVidia storage drivers are definitely to be avoided. Good point.

 

My Samsung Writemaster is 3 years old now, and has switched PC since, still going fine.

Havent ever burnt a DVD With it however....

 

My NEC DVD burner is still going strong after 4 years. I use it a LOT, and it still doesn't miss a beat. NEC may be worth considering.

 

Ive got an Benq that has lasted me the last 10years and thats with almost daily use. I wouldnt use a different make

 

OK so NOW it's over with, after seeing that LG were packing three different burners into the same retail pack and the various comments about being able to tell which rebadge you got depending on the tray, I decided not to give them another chance if I don't know what I'm buying.

Sony's DRU-870S can be bought as an OEM Optiarc, the AD-7240S but just for once, spent the extra couple of quid to get decent packaging and that will (almost) stop the possibilty of damage in transit - as no burner I've ever owned has only lasted two years, as far as I'm concerned that must have had an influence back in 2007.

Was considering a spraypaint job on an old 12x DVD-ROM I had, but they're a tenner now so I'll just get another one when the time comes.

Cheers again for all the replies.

 

I have the OEM Optiarc DVD in my main desktop at the moment, it seems like a good drive to me but I use it rarely.

 

Arrived at last, (nice of UPS to wake up and get on with it), installed, using the freebie software CDBurnerXP 4 instead of wasting 1.7 Gigs on Nero Essentials 8, the DRU 870/Optiarc burns in under 5mins , so my LG was dead but it's out of my PC at last. Will stick with my external Iomega burner for new game installations, it's been built/housed well enough to have read and written for over five years and still work.

Though Scan has moved with the times and is selling SATA DVD Readers, I'm happy with how things are for now - don't want to add to any further cable mess with a second internal until the day I'm ready to unplug the PSU from the whole board and tidy everything at once. That's a job for another day.

Right after getting my Optiarc the Elite List burner is an LG but forget loyalty from now on, as remarked it's word of mouth about what works best at the time. Will only stick with Optiarc if this one is still working when it's time for the AM3 build.