Shoping for a new Windows PC with BD drive...

**schmidj** · 08-10-2023, 11:55 PM

Re: Shoping for a new Windows PC with BD drive...

If you buy/build a "tower" desktop computer, most have spaces to install your own optical drive, presumably SATA. I admittedly haven't researched it recently, but historically many "internal" drives have consistently outperformed "external" drives, in max CD reading/burning speed, which translates to ripping speed, and in accuracy and durability. But "internal" drives work fine externally when used with a SATA-USB adapter which supports them and an external power supply. And, when it comes to ripping CDs, you don't need new drives, you are probably better off with a variety of drives. I have several of one make (Samsung SH224, but also used by others with their own labels) which regularly read scratched/damaged disks without error, but usually never read above 8X (slowing down ripping greatly) and tend to grind to an almost halt on more badly damaged discs, even in Burst mode. Other drives may fail on the scratched discs but read other damaged discs just fine and read most discs much faster than the Samsungs.

Of course your requirements for ripping audio from DVDs or BDs may differ, although I've found the one internal BD drive I have seems to perform well as a CD ripper (but nowhere near as well as the SH224s with scratched CDs.)

One issue with external drives,or internal ones used externally, if you bump them while ripping, you are often guaranteed a bad rip. I speak from experience when ripping using the laptop when traveling.

So an assortment of drives, which may often be salvaged from old, junk PCs for free, will serve you well. (If doing a lot of ripping, you can also use them to run multiple instances of dBpoweramp at the same time, although you'll probably want to have multiple monitors on your PC to keep straight which drive is which.)

You can buy expensive cases to hold internal drives externally, but I just have mine sitting on top of the tower machine, now with some tape holding them down (after breaking one by accidentally knocking it to the floor one day - broke the SATA connector). I now have 8 drives connected to the machine, four internally and four on top with USB adapters. So many because I sometimes need to make duplicate CDs of location recordings I have done. My tower machine amounts to a homemade duplicator, using Nero software. But I've run as many as six instances of dBpa at the same time, on three video monitors.

As others have commented and I can confirm, most drives that claim to support C2 pointers, in fact don't. I've given up on that.

I hope this helps you, do not think this too deep, you can always acquire more free junk drives over time and use the ones that work the best. If you scrap your Dell, you can even salvage the drive from that one.

**ferrarabrainpan** · 08-11-2023, 02:37 AM

Re: Shoping for a new Windows PC with BD drive...

Thanks for your reply. You are way more into it than I plan to be. I have had a few discs over the years that would not rip without bad frames, aborting the rip. I ended up getting another copy and if after a third copy it showed the same errors I chalked it up to a bad pressing, then disabled C2 pointers and got a rip with no audible glitches. I have had some sketchy CDs that were so corrupted it took a long time to rip them (I had to change my settings to allow up to 40 minutes to rip the track to avoid aborting the rip).

At this stage I have ripped my entire collection and I'm not buying so many CDs anymore, more and more it's downloads when I add some music to my library. I suppose I will just get a basic internal optical drive with my next PC and if I run into trouble I will get an external drive and try that out.

Shoping for a new Windows PC with BD drive...

Shoping for a new Windows PC with BD drive...

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