# Best DVD burner for Linux?

## yodermk

Ok, decided to get a new drive, preferrably one that supports Everything(tm).  DVD and CD RW, etc.  Are there any that you recommend in particular?  Any to avoid?

Preferrably something available on Newegg.  I like the looks of this Plextor, which has unanimously positive reviews.  A bit pricey.  Is the extra price worth it?  Also, the system requirements say you need a P4 1.4GHz.  I have dual P3 850s.  Is their "requirement" just BS, or needed only under Windows and/or to burn at the fastest speeds, or would you really need that to burn anything?

Have searched, but the best info I've found so far is in this Linux-Magazine issue, but it's over a year old and I imagine things have changed.  So I'm just wondering what works well for people here.

Thanks!

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## Sachankara

Well, I don't know which one is the best, but my AOpen DUW1608/ARR "just works". It has never failed to burn a disc, no matter what type I've thrown at it, and it just costs ~$60...

http://www.aopen.nl/products/dvd+rw/DUW1608ARR.htm

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## Moloch

My NEC ND-3520A is great.

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## Lokheed

Plextors have been nothing but quality since CDRWs. Plextor is synonymous with excellence. Is it worth it? Perhaps. DVDs arent comparable to CDs in writing quality. Media and drive both play a crucial role with how your final product plays. I have cheap media that after 9 months, shows up glaring errors and refuses to play on some of my drives (a lesson to buy nothing but quality media). I did research before I purchased my drive (NEC 2500A) and found it to be consistently reported as producing excellent burns with minimal amounts of errors.

Would I recommend it? Yes I would. NECs are built solid and great for the price. If I had the money would I choose a plextor? You better believe it.

Funny enough I purchased a Yamaha 20X/10X/40X for $200 some 3 years ago (CDRW) which I cant give away today. I have known people to have bought LGs and to a lesser extent Acero's which ended up giving them the same result as me: one burnt CD that played anywhere you threw it in, and they paid less than half of what I paid for.

So I guess you are paying for piece of mind. I have found throughout my life one glaring rule. Cheap things are cheaply made. The only marketing angle these NoName brand items have is convincing you, you are paying for advertising...but cheap toilet paper is thinner so you need more, cheap dishwashing liquid is not as concentrated so you use more, and cheap plastic wrap just doesnt work worth a damn. Companies arent "nice guys" that take pay cuts. If one sells a football for $30.00 and makes 70% profit, and the other sells one for $20.00, he too is going to want to make 70% profit...no one takes a loss, so how can he still make 70%? I cant disprove the marketing theory but I find it to lack any credibility.

If you had to choose a cheap model, I recommend the NEC 35XX at this point. If you have the money, then the Plextor is tops. I myself have never went with cheap components without extensive research if I had too. Some people could care less if it will do the job. It all depends on what you are willing to live with. Google the models that show you interest and start accumulating some data on what the best model is for you at what price range. Its work, but when you want something done right, you gotta do it yourself.

I have also heard good things about the LGs as well if you want to look into them.

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## yodermk

Thanks so far!  The NEC definitely looks good, and AFAIK is a good brand name.  But I do need the thing to work -- I'm in Ecuador and someone will be bringing it down from the States next month.  If it doesn't work, I'm screwed.  Given that, the Plextor might be worth it.

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## Lokheed

 *yodermk wrote:*   

> Thanks so far!  The NEC definitely looks good, and AFAIK is a good brand name.  But I do need the thing to work -- I'm in Ecuador and someone will be bringing it down from the States next month.  If it doesn't work, I'm screwed.  Given that, the Plextor might be worth it.

 

I am sure every single model will work. They dont stay in business (manufacturers) by selling products that simply dont work. Its quality of the burn you are looking for. Honestly I can recommend NEC and Plextor and have heard second hand good experience from those that have owned LG. I cant see you getting burned if you buy either of those. All 3 are quite good and certainly wont fall apart or just not work in Linux or any other system.

Plextors are pretty pricey so its up to you but I think you can buy LG or NEC with confidence...

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## mdshort

LiteOn is one of the most stable drives known to man.

LG is good because they really know about spinning stuff, seriously.  I got a washer and dryer that are LG models and they're said to need the least maintinance because their "direct drive" system (beltless).  I would trust them too.

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## yodermk

Thanks, guess I'll get the NEC unless someone can come up with a reason to justify the price of the Plextor.  :Smile: 

RE: LG, I guess they fixed their problems?  I remember the episode of Mandrake destroying LG drives.  That has caused me to want to avoid them, but perhaps unjustifiably.

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## Moloch

Well I didn't buy the NEC at the drop of a hat. I read reviews. NEC had the least amount of problems and could use the most amount of media. DVD read spead was a little less than some of the others, but I don't notice.

I always buy quality but higher cost does not always mean higher quality. Just do some research and pick the best regardless of price. Unless it's too expensive.  :Wink: 

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## shamgar

 *Sachankara wrote:*   

> Well, I don't know which one is the best, but my AOpen DUW1608/ARR "just works". It has never failed to burn a disc, no matter what type I've thrown at it, and it just costs ~$60...
> 
> http://www.aopen.nl/products/dvd+rw/DUW1608ARR.htm

 

Does it still "just work"?  Are you running on 2.6 or 2.4?

I recently picked one of these up, and I can't seem to get it to even read my DVDs.  cdrecord can find it, but xine, ogle, and mplayer all bomb out trying to read it.

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## kill

I second the NEC suggestion. I have a ND3520A and it works great. Even better now that I flashed it to remove region and rip locks  :Very Happy: . The mad dog firmware from http://tdb.rpc1.org/#ND3520A works great and maintains the ability to burn dual layer DVDs (The patched NEC firmware broke dual layer burning for me).

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## Rad

 *yodermk wrote:*   

> 
> 
> RE: LG, I guess they fixed their problems?  I remember the episode of Mandrake destroying LG drives.  That has caused me to want to avoid them, but perhaps unjustifiably.

 

No problem with my LG drive, and I know others also work. I'd even consider them the best choice, judging by the cost for this brand around here. LiteOn and NEC are no problem either; it's just a few cup of coffen's worth of a difference, really. And if you don't wanna buy fast, expensive media but rather a lot of them ('cos DVD storage is cheapest or most transportable/modular), any drive that works will do. Which really is about ANY drive.  :Smile: 

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## TerranAce007

I bought an Optorite retail drive from newegg back in November and it is great. It is 12x DVD+R and 8x DVD-R, with 4X RW and 2.4x Dual Layer, plus the 40x/24x/40x CD-RW functionality. I went with it over the 16X NEC drive because it was cheaper, and came in retail packaging instead of OEM. 16x is pretty much the standard now, and drives have dropped in price, but I still recommend the Optorite drives. Mine worked in  my desktop system under Fedora Core 3, Debian 3.1, and now CentOS 4.0. I am also able to put it into an external enclosure and use it via USB 2.0 on my Gentoo laptop.

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## marz

I've bought this, easy operation and low cost

Note: I've not changed the firmware to css1... does anybody have an idea where to getit ?

INQUIRY:                [SONY    ][DVD RW DRU-540A ][1.0a]

GET [CURRENT] CONFIGURATION:

 Mounted Media:         14h, DVD-RW Sequential

 Media ID:              OPTODISCW002

 :Sad:  reported write performance might be bogus

GET [CURRENT] PERFORMANCE:

 Write Performance:     2.0x1385=2770KB/s@[0 -> 0]

 Speed Descriptor#0:    00/0 R@8.0x1385=11080KB/s W@2.0x1385=2770KB/s

READ DVD STRUCTURE[#10h]:

 Media Book Type:       32h, DVD-RW book [revision 2]

 Legacy lead-out at:    2298496*2KB=4707319808

READ DVD STRUCTURE[#0h]:

 Media Book Type:       32h, DVD-RW book [revision 2]

 Last border-out at:    2298496*2KB=4707319808

READ DISC INFORMATION:

 Disc status:           blank

 Number of Sessions:    1

 State of Last Session: empty

 Number of Tracks:      1

READ TRACK INFORMATION[#1]:

 Track State:           blank

 Track Start Address:   0*2KB

 Next Writable Address: 0*2KB

 Free Blocks:           2297888*2KB

 Track Size:            2297888*2KB

READ CAPACITY:          1*2048=2048

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## kill

Marz, do you mean rpc-1 for region protection? If its not here you probably won't find it anywhere.

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## Cintra

http://club.cdfreaks.com/search.php?searchid=1084973

mvh

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## gctaylor

Anyone following this thread have a USB only drive?  Would it make a difference?  I would like to get a USB DVD -everything drive so that I can move it between different machines.  That should work in Linux right?  

Gary

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## bravo911

 *shamgar wrote:*   

>  *Sachankara wrote:*   Well, I don't know which one is the best, but my AOpen DUW1608/ARR "just works". It has never failed to burn a disc, no matter what type I've thrown at it, and it just costs ~$60...
> 
> http://www.aopen.nl/products/dvd+rw/DUW1608ARR.htm 
> 
> Does it still "just work"?  Are you running on 2.6 or 2.4?
> ...

 

I have the same problem.... I've tried to rip dvd's using wine+dvdshrink on this drive and it just craps out with a "copy protection error", however I can take the same DVD and drop it into my CD-burner/DVD-rom drive and rip it without errors... The down side to this is that the CD-burner drive is very slow compared to the DVD-burner in terms of DVD read speed... Personally i'm not impressed with this Aopen drive.... I cant watch movies in Xine (or other dvd progs) off of it. it just gives me errors and craps out... I have been looking at the Plextor 716a and i'm impressed with it's reported abilities (see here). I would like to know if anyone is actually using it under linux sucessfully with wine+dvdshrink. The price of the drive is double what I paid for the aopen, but the buffer size is 8mb vs the 2mb on the aopen. I dont really know too much about dvd drives under linux, but i'm learning quickly. I think i will return this aopen... I've had decent success burning, but I have never been able to exceed 6x during the burn process, despite the media being used. Overall, i feel rather shafted with this drive... It was cheap, i'll admit that, but I still dont think that it is worth the $65 I paid for it... Normall I dont buy stuff based on price.. Quality is my priority, and this is another example of why i've adopted that motto. (the best 'cheap' hardware i've ever got was a $9 phillips saa7134 tv tuner card off of ebay... that was lucky.)[/url]

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## Xaid

I bought a Pioneer DVR-109 and so far had no problems with it.

The only thing I noticed was the  DVD decryption speed is a bit slow compared to my old regular DVD drive, but other than that, no problems at all, i havent tried burning any DVD+R nor DVD+-RW yet (only burned DVD-R) but I doubt there will be a problem there.

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## Entropy42

 *Xaid wrote:*   

> I bought a Pioneer DVR-109 and so far had no problems with it.
> 
> The only thing I noticed was the  DVD decryption speed is a bit slow compared to my old regular DVD drive, but other than that, no problems at all, i havent tried burning any DVD+R nor DVD+-RW yet (only burned DVD-R) but I doubt there will be a problem there.

 

A lot of drives have firmware caps on read speeds for CSS-encrypted media.  The DVR-105 had the same cap until someone patched it out.  (Hence the availability of "12xRIP" firmwares, in addition to RPC-1, 2x4all, etc.)

My first DVD drive was a Pioneer DVR-105, which was an excellent drive.  You really can't go wrong with the company that *created* the initial DVD-R specification.  Also, so far as I've been able to tell from my personal experience and that of many others, you also can't go wrong with Lite-On.  The SOHW-1693 (I think I got that model number correct) is only $38 at NewEgg and has yet to burn a single coaster.

I wouldn't go with LG - if they can't get reading right, how are they possibly going to get writing correct?  (The LG DVD-ROM drive in my laptop is the worst modern drive I have ever encountered with respect to its ability to read media that I feed it.)

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## piewie

The big advantage of LG was the DVD-RAM support at a low price, but you should keep your eyes on the blank's manufacturer (there are people, for which this is nothing unusual). 

The new NEC drives now also have DVD-RAM support at a low price and a wide range of blanks, which can be used. The NEC devices support q-checks, which are actually not fully supported under linux (only C1/C2-scan), but this is only because the developer of qpxtool has no NEC device. NEC gives two years of warranty.

In December there will be a new Plextor PX-760 (750 is not a really Plextor, its a Benq). Plextor has q-check under linux. Two years of warranty. A high price. No DVD-RAM. A good support. RMA is very fast - It took 48 hours until a new Plextor drive arrived at my door.

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## codergeek42

I recently purchased a Pioneer DVR-110D (black) and am very pleased with it. I've only tried (and successfully completed) burning DVD+R backups and a few audio CDs for the moment, but it works very well and it's fairly quiet.  :Smile:  *Kernel logs wrote:*   

> hda: PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-110D, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
> 
> hda: ATAPI 40X DVD-ROM DVD-R CD-R/RW drive, 2000kB Cache, UDMA (66)

 

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## longship

 *mdshort wrote:*   

> LiteOn is one of the most stable drives known to man.
> 
> LG is good because they really know about spinning stuff, seriously.  I got a washer and dryer that are LG models and they're said to need the least maintinance because their "direct drive" system (beltless).  I would trust them too.

 

Let's see...

* Run K3b...

* Select LG Drive...

* Open new DVD Data project

* Filling image up with files from hard drive...

* Ready?  Put in blank disk into LG drive...

* Press "Burn, Wash, Rinse, Spin-dry"

 :Wink: 

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## sirdilznik

I have a NEC ND-3550A.  It is awesome.  It burns everything, and it does it FAST!  Plus it was really cheap.

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## jmp_

Believe me, Lite-ON (iomega?) and Plextor are the two better options, the second one is more expensive but it has incredible quality.

greetings.

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