HOME  >>  Media & Optical Drives (Updated: March 6th, 2011) What brands of recordable media do you recommend? - We have heavily used RiData for years and can easily recommend this brand. We also sell RiData and have had great feedback from our customers. Other brands that are highly rated are Taiyo Yuden, Fuji, Verbatim (look for made in Japan on the packaging), and Panasonic (look for Made In Japan on the packaging). You can find more information on CDR Zone's site Good Advice - To reduce wear and tear, remove discs from the drive when they're not being used. Hold them by the edges, put them in a proper sleeve, and keep them out of direct sunlight and away from heat sources. What drive should I get? - We use and sell LG optical drives because they have a low failure rate, they read and write just about every type of media there is, they come bundled with great software, and they won't break the bank. Warranty - We provide a 1-year replacement warranty (parts and labour) on all new optical drives we install. Manufacturer's warranty may be longer. MEDIA FORMAT GUIDE Format: Max Speed Rating: Max Data Transfer Rate: Capacity: Read/Write Ability: CD-ROM 56x 8.4MB/sec 700MB Read only CD-R 52x 7.8MB/sec 700MB Recordable CD-RW 32x 4.8MB/sec 650MB Re-writeable DVD-ROM 16x 22MB/sec 4.7GB Read only DVD-R 8x 11MB/sec 4.7GB Recordable DVD+R 8x 11MB/sec 4.7GB Recordable DVD-RW 4x 5.5MB/sec 4.7GB Re-writeable DVD+RW 4x 5.5MB/sec 4.7GB Re-writeable DVD-RAM 4x 5.5MB/sec 9.4GB double-sided Re-writeable What is a CD-ROM disc? - These are pre-recorded CDs that usually have music or software on them. They cannot be used for recording. What is a CD-R disc? - This is a blank CD that can be recorded onto only once. They hold up to 700MB of data, which makes them great for making backups, archives, and custom music CDs. What is a CD-RW disc? - This is a blank CD that can be re-used many times. They hold up to 650MB of data, and can be reformatted (erased) and recorded onto again and again. CD-RW discs can only be read by CD-RW drives and newer devices that support MultiRead. CD-RW discs are suitable for backing up things like monthly reports that need to be overwritten frequently. What is MultiRead? - Drives that support the MultiRead standard can read most audio and data CDs, CD-Rs, and CD-RWs. What is a CD-ROM drive? - CD-ROM stands for "compact disk read-only memory". They are devices that are used to read data CDs and play music CDs. Newer CD-ROM drives can read most audio and data CDs, CD-Rs and CD-RWs; they cannot record. What is a CD-RW drive? - CD-RW stands for CD-recordable/re-writable. A modern CD-RW drive can read most audio and data CDs, CD-Rs and CD-RWs, and it can also record data and music to CD-R and CD-RW discs. What does 52x36x52 mean? - The first number is the write speed for recording (burning) a single session CD-R or DV-R disc. In this case it would take less than 3 minutes to burn a CD. (52 x 150 KB/sec = 7800KB/sec). The second number is the rewrite speed for erasing and recording a CD-RW, a DVD+RW, a DVD-RW, or a DVD-RAM. The last number is the read speed, or how fast a drive reads a disc. Fast read speeds won't improve video or music playback, but it will accelerate software installation or anything that involves copying huge data files. What is Multisession Recording? - A modern CD-RW allows you to add data to a CD-R or CD-RW disc over time. Multisession recording is usually reserved for special applications such as Kodak Photo CDs. Files saved to a multisession disc may not be accessible until the disc has been finalized, and may not be readable in drives that do not support multisession, so you are usually better off using packet writing software to record data over time. What is Packet Writing? - A modern CD-RW allows you to add data to a CD-R or CD-RW disc over time. Packet writing software such as Nero's "InCD", NTI's "FileCD", B's "Clip", Roxio's "DirectCD" or their newer "Drag-To-Disc" allow you to record data onto a CD-R or CD-RW disc from Windows Explorer, My Computer, or by using File/Save As. It lets you treat a CD-R or CD-RW disc as though it were a big floppy disc. Discs must be formatted before you can write to them, and they can only be read by computers that have packet writing software installed. More about Burning CDs - For burning CDs, the DRW-24B1ST offers the option of disc-at-once, track-at-once, session-at-once, and packet recording. The only differences between the "at-once" styles is when the laser stops writing. For disc and session-at-once, the laser doesn't stop until all the data has been written to the disc. The session is not closed using session-at-once, meaning you can use the disc again later without erasing the data. Track-at-once causes the laser to stop at the end of every track, leaving a space on the disc before the beginning of a new track. Sometimes this style can cause a click between audio CD tracks. Packet recording, or packet writing, is an extremely useful tool. This allows you to use a CD or DVD as you would a drive, making it somewhat like a floppy drive used to be. Packet writing is what allows you to drag and drop files to and from your CD/DVD drive as though it were a regular hard drive. More about Burning DVDs - As for the DVD writing functions of the DRW-24B1ST, they are quite similar the CD writing functions. Besides disc-at-once, the DVD functions also include random, incremental, and sequential recording, as well as restricted overwriting. Random recording is just what it sounds like. It allows each individual 32kb block on the disc to be written to without compromising the readability of the entire disc. The data is then written in a non-linear fashion and pulled from the disc in the same way. Sequential recording use a phase-change technology that allows the data being written to the disc to be in a linear order in cases when it will have to be sequentially accessed, such as video files. It also allows this to happen over the course of multiple sessions. Incremental recording, in essence, allows you to close the disc multiple times, creating separate borders around the information written during each recording. It is very similar to sequential recording. It should be noted, however, that using incremental and sequential recording might cause problems if you are trying to view the discs on use a UDF version older than 1.5. This affects a lot of standard DVD players, which use version 1.02. If you use an incremental or sequentially recorded disc in these, you will likely only be able to view one "session" of recording. How do I make music CD's - First bear in mind that compatibility can be a big issue. Not all players get along with all brands of media (disks). You need to find a combination of recorder, media, and player that get along. Also if you burn a bunch of .WAV files to a CD, you'll only be able to play them in a computer, and on some of the newer players. Here's some tips on how to make music CD's: Use a new blank CD-R disc. Do not use packet writing. Record in CD-DA format for use in older car and home stereos (about 10-17 songs/CD) Record in WAV format for use in newer players that support WAVs (about 10-17 songs/CD) Record in MP3 format for use in newer players that support MP3s (about 100-170 songs/CD) Make sure the option to close (finalize) the session at the end is selected. Record your songs in one pass. How To make MP3s - First extract (rip) the audio from the original CD, and then encode it as an MP3 and save it to your hard drive. Some programs can "rip" and "encode" in one easy step. Higher quality settings result in larger MP3 files. Most people can't tell the difference between an MP3 at 160Kbps and the original. How do I Make All My Songs the Same Volume? - The process is called normalizing. When you have audio files from different sources, they will probably have different volume levels. When making your custom music CD, you'll want equal volume on all the tracks. Most newer CD recording programs will automatically normalize audio files for you when you select 'Audio CD'. Older programs may require you to manually enable this feature, yet others may not even have this feature, in which case you will need to find and use software that offers 'normalization'. What are lossy formats? - Most media files use some type of compression to shrink the size of media files. Lossless compression can take the compressed data and bebuild the original data exactly. Lossy compression build an approximation of the original data, but usually produce a much smaller compressed file than lossless methods. LINKS: CD-Recordable FAQ Burn a CD or DVD Demo: Burn a CD or DVD Burn a CD or DVD in Windows Media Player Demo: Burning TV shows to DVD using Windows Media Center Demo: Create a party playlist What is DVD? Demo: Make a DVD-Video disc DVD Player and Blu-ray Player medium and feature support list