Price Guides, March 2005: Storage
by Kristopher Kubicki on March 7, 2005 7:30 PM EST- Posted in
- Guides
DVDR Drives
Is there any reason not to get a DVDR drive these days? 16X support on both formats (even though only one of them actually produces media), dual layer write speed at 4X or higher, and the drives are dirt cheap. The product cycle for any optical storage products is difficult to describe at best, but the 8 th – 9 th generation design phases are/were downright bizarre. A few months ago, we wrote a roundup between the major DVDR manufacturers, and even looking at all of those reviewed models that were 16X write capable, most are obsolete already. Pioneer, Sony, LiteOn and LG all have new revisions of their 16X drives with better servos and write strategies capable of 4X dual layer writes. In some instances, the older drives are slightly cheaper, but due to the particulars of optical storage distributors, those drives will probably be completely dried up even before you have the chance to buy them. Given that the 9 th generation drives available today are really nothing more than “fixed” versions of the previous generation, saving a couple of dollars over last year’s hardware doesn’t make a lot of sense. To add a little bit of icing to the cake, the 9 th generation drives from most of the major manufacturers have a speed bump in CD-R burn speed as well.We are working on another comprehensive DVDR roundup that should publish in the next couple weeks, but in the interim, we still recommend the NEC ND-3520A. Pioneer and NEC flip-flopped back and forth during the earliest days of the 8 th generation (16X DVD+R) drives, but with the introduction of the Pioneer DVR-109 [RTPE: DVR-109] and the NEC ND-3520A [RTPE: ND-3520A], no competitor has come close to the NEC drive as far as compatibility, stability and price. At publication, the ND-3520A retails for just under $60, and that’s a few bucks higher than last week’s price.
It’s not to say that other DVD drives are less capable than the ND-3520A or the DVR-109. The LG GSA-416 [RTPE: GSA-4163B] has an awesome price right now, considering the drive’s support for DVD-RAM. The only drawback on any LG drive is the less frequent firmware updates. Between NEC, LG or Pioneer, you won’t be disappointed and we hold a firm recommendation between the LG and the NEC drive. Stay tuned, of course, for the full DVDR roundup in the coming weeks!
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Live - Wednesday, March 9, 2005 - link
I second Semo. Now that firewire 800 is coming strong external looks even more tempting.semo - Tuesday, March 8, 2005 - link
Kristopher, could you include external storage solutions in your brilliant price guides. there have been some really interesting options lately like the wd passport and lacie 300693... both are host powered mobile hdds but i don't know which one is better.MadAd - Tuesday, March 8, 2005 - link
#8 No not really. The important thing is whether all drives are measured the same way. Its just a comparison.Auzner - Tuesday, March 8, 2005 - link
Wouldn't it make more sense to calculate $/GB by [$/(.93*GB)]? Because a 250gb isn't really a 250gb because of the 1000^3/1024^3 stuff.KristopherKubicki - Tuesday, March 8, 2005 - link
MrEMan: The drives are listed as ATA100 - because quite frankly ATA133 is ATA100. ATA133 isn't *really* a spec. But I digress :-Pdev0lution: The graph generator is actually writing Feb01 - as in February first. I'll see if I can't tweak it in the future.
Kristopher
dev0lution - Tuesday, March 8, 2005 - link
Price graph's listing 2001 as the year in the dates?MrEMan - Tuesday, March 8, 2005 - link
I notice that quite a few of the Maxtor PATA drives are listed as ATA 100, when in fact Maxtor is the only major manufacturer producing ATA 133 drives, which makes since they created the spec.MadAd - Tuesday, March 8, 2005 - link
I noticed the price of the 250Gb 7200.8s drop in the UK too, I just picked up 4 for £346 delivered - STR benches upto 90MB/s on a TX4000 in raid 10- its like having a raptor with half a TB of space :)segagenesis - Tuesday, March 8, 2005 - link
Riplock = most of the modern drives will only let you read a movie at 2x on purpose to discourage ripping. There are firmware mods if you dont care about warranty to remove this (and enable RPC-1 if you have movies from other regions, like I do). On the ND-2500 I can get 12x rip at the end of the disc (or layer break) rather than maybe 3.6x.dragonballgtz - Tuesday, March 8, 2005 - link
OK, what is riplock? :confused;