Recommend an Internal Drive - Please!

[Shiver]

Hi

One of my winter projects is to get a large CD collection stored as FLAC files on my NAS. I'm looking for a 'one stop' process and I am interested in trying dBpoweramp. One of my concerns was the suitability of my old DVD-RW drive and having consulted the Drive Accuracy sticky it seems my old Sony/Optiarc AD-5170A is one of the poor performing 'back of the bus' drives.

As others have found, many if not all of the best performing drives listed are not current products (not that I can find anyway) so I'm a little stuck on what to get to replace my current drive.

I'm looking for a basic no-frills drive that will write DVDs & CDs, I'm not bothered about Blueray, double layer or the ability to print disks etc.

I appreciate that it might not be possible to recommend a specific model because product lifetimes are very short so currently available drives will be mainly untested but I'm wondering if there are any particular manufacturers, or product, ranges that have proved to be more suitable than others. Can anyone make any recommendations ? I'm in the UK where commonly available drives are from the likes of Liteon, LG, Samsung, Pioneer and Sony. Any help will be appreciated.

Cheers - S

[pablogm123]

My suggestion: Try yourself the Sony drive, NEC based drives are pretty decent, with very good burn quality and good ripping abilities. I own a AD-7240S, and can rip flawlessly lots of discs, even slightly damaged discs.

Don't replace the current drive anyway. ADD another drive based on different brand of chipset, preferably SATA type (ATAPI drives shares the bus, SATA not). For example, a Mediatek based drive (+6 in Accuraterip) from Lite-On or Samsung (my suggestions). It is very useful to have two drives based on different chipsets: The other drive could rip certain discs unrippable by the other one, and useful to verify against the other drive a doubtful rip. And don't get a LG drive: Current drives offered by LG features lots of problems when user enable C2 pointers.

If you don't like to have another internal drive, you could attach it externally. I, personally, attach externally SATA writers through a bracket, bundled with many Gigabyte boards a time ago, which provides an eSATA + external molex, and a SATA-eSATA + molex to SATA power cable. Also, I apply a adhesive foam in the bottom side of drive, so that it reduce vibrations and doesn't scratch my desk.

[Shiver]

Hi. Thanks for the helpful response. :smile:

Based on your post, I'll look at drives from Samsung, Liteon & Sony/NEC in that order. When looking I'll research to ensure that the drive has a Mediatek chipset (if Samsung or Liteon).

A dual drive setup would be nice but it's not particularly suitable or practical in this instance. I had a go with EAC on my current drive last year and had a quite a few problems, seeing as the drive is pretty near the bottom of the Drive Accuracy list (92% from 329 users) and new ones are 'cheap as chips' I thought I'd change it. (The drive might be faulty anyway - it hardly ever gets used for anything else so I wouldn't know.)

Thanks again.

[Shiver]

I can pick up a Samsung SH-222BB drive easily & quickly, is anyone using one of these?

[pablogm123]

Samsung drives are always based on Mediatek chipset, except SH-S223C (which features a chipset made by Samsung).

I used to rip many CDs using a SE-S184M and a SH-202J drives, and both are pretty fast, relatively silent, C2 pointers always works OK, and can rip flawlessly lots of CDs, even the slightly damaged. These drives don't cache audio, which is nice when dBpoweramp has to re-rip frames.

[Shiver]

I used to rip many CDs using a SE-S184M ...........

Funny you should say that; I've just been through my collection of unloved but working computers and found a Samsung SH-S182M as well as an NEC ND3540A which both seem to feature reasonably well in the accuracy list. I'll probably put one of these in a external IDE/USB enclosure I have, it might be a better option than a modern drive.

I've also found a Liteon DH-20A3P but this doesn't feature in the list.

Having done some reading over at MyCE, am I correct in understanding the modern DVD writers don't support C2 pointers? If true, that along with the move to bigger cache sizes probably makes newer drives less suitable for ripping.

I'm probably(?) getting this all out of proportion. :rolleyes:

Thanks again for all your help. :smile:

[pablogm123]

If you can afford that, get the DH-20A3P drive. It is very likely that this drive can overread into lead-out using dBpoweramp, a positive thing to have.

C2 pointers support depends on chipset used. NEC and Mediatek based supports C2 pointers for a long time. But there are drives based on chipsets which can reports C2 errors, which states not to support C2 pointers. EAC won't use C2 pointers in that case, but dBpoweramp ignores that flag and C2 pointers works perfectly. For example, my Pioneer DVR-107D and 110D drive feature a NEC chipset which can reports C2 errors, but Pioneer set the C2 pointers flag as not supported. EAC cannot take advantage of C2 pointers, but dBpoweramp ignores that flag, requests main channel + C2 ponters and everything is fine.

And every drive you can get has a cache, always. It is up to firmware that drives cache or don't cache.

[Shiver]

If you can afford that, get the DH-20A3P drive....

I have the DH-20A3P drive in my collection. :smile2: I bought it new to build a PC for my brother, it was probably only ever used to install the OS. I'll stick that either in a enclosure or in the PC.

Thanks for your help yet again. :D

[pablogm123]

For me, those old Lite-On drives worth their weight in gold, because can overread into pregap and lead-out (I need both for a special app which realigns main channel and subcode for data tracks, and to dump entirely the audio range), features superb C2 error reporting, are good at dumps subcodes, and read perfectly the last sector of data track of PS1 discs.