DVD Copy Review
What is the Best DVD Writer For You

When it comes to purchasing a CD DVD writer you have to consider a few things first.

Most of these are of course reflected in the price.

Things such as ..

Recorder or just player
A player will be cheaper than a Player / Recorder , but do you want to be able to copy files ?



Speed
The Speed of some drives, especially the older ones are horrendously slow , if you going to copy or backup large amounts of file this will be even more noticeable.

Interface of the drive
The interface really has two purposes , the first is the compatibility of the drive to your system, and secondly the performance of the drive.
Type of media
When considering media what would you like to be able to do ?

Internal / External
Internal and external drives , both have there advantages and disadvantages Costs ie which drives are cheap.
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So is going for the cheapest drive a false economy if your going to have to replace / upgrade 6 months down the line.

Recorder or Just Player
When it comes to selecting a recorder or just a player , the first thing is the price difference a recorder or writer will allow you to play and record to both DVD’s and CD’s ,
Whilst a DVD player or DVD ROM “ read only media “ will only allow you to play DVD’s and CD’s , so you have to decide you may not need a DVD Writer today , but what about in the future ?

Speed how fast is it ?
The speed of the drive is very useful when copy data to or from a DVD , the faster drives today are 16 speed, they will also copy at around 6 to 8 speed, and will copy and read from cd’s at about 48x dvd cd replication.
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Interface of the Drive Internal or External

If you have a desktop computer with a spare IDE port then you might want to consider an IDE drive , this is the cheapest type of drive available and the IDE bus speed will not be a bottleneck.
 

Another type of internal drive is the SCSI “ Small Computer System Interface “ .

You have to have a SCSI controller card to be able to use one of these drives though. ( DVD copy review article )

External drives really only come in two variations today, the first is USB “ Make sure your computer has USB 2 , USB 1 is about 40 times slower and takes too long to copy larger files.

USB Drives are very simple to install and are an ideal solution for a laptop / notebook or if your computer has no free slots for an internal drive .

Another type of external drive is the firewire type , USB 2 is slightly faster than Firewire 400 , but with Firewire 800 on the horizon this will be the fastest by far “ the price will probably also be the highest by far “ It’s now standard on the latest Macs , but we’ve yet to see it on Pc’s .

In a nutshell external drives are always going to be more expensive. Your really paying for an internal drive unit in an external housing with a separate power supply ( DVD copy review article )

Type of Media
When it comes to CD’s everything is very straight forward, pretty much any CD will work in any CD Writer.
But with DVD’s it can be very different. Firstly we have + or – Type DVD’s .

A lot of newer drives today will read both types, but it’s worth double checking .

The next point is single or dual layer
A single layer DVD Disk is 4.7gb , but a dual layer DVD disk is 8.4gb which is very useful for having a complete HD backup

To be able to use the dual layer DVD disks you need a drive that will support Dual Layer technology. Any dual layer drives can also use the 4.7gb single layer disks as well.

DVD-RW disks can be used again and again , which is great it means you don’t have to discard them when no longer needed, initially they do cost more then the write once DVD’s but after 2 or 3 it’s justifies the cost. The reason for the – and + DVD formats came about when DVD drive manufacturers sought to make a standard while other manufacturers sought to make another standard. Need a hand installing your DVD / CD Drive checkout our install page ( DVD copy review article )

Repair scratched DVD and CD
Did you know usually scratched or damaged CD's and DVD's can be repaired, checkout our our repair hints and tips ..

CD & DVD player repair basics
If your DVD or CD player is having problems checkout our guide before replacing, much of the time the issue may not be the actual drive or it can be resolved simply ..

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