DVD drive is dying , what to buy ?

[alkasecond]

Currently I have Pioneer 303s SCSI , that I bought couple years ago.
Its a slot loader rated 6x.
For last couple months it's been giving me more and more trouble.
It reads CDroms , music CDs no problem , but when I insert DVD movie
it just spits it out.
I have to reinsert disc 10~20 times before it catches on but when
it finaly does it plays just fine (rips also) for as long as I
leave disc in the dive.
Over 2.5 years I ripped ~100 movies with this drive , I heard
that ripping is not very healty for DVD roms.

Anyway to make it short , what schould I buy?
Buy another SCSI or go for IDE?
On both IDE channels I have HD masters allready.
If I put DVD as slave wont it slow down HD (currently ATA100)?
And if SCSI what make ?
I've heard before that Pioneer makes the best drives , for obvious
reasons I doubth it right now.
The way I see it :
IDE : cheaper , easier to find
SCSI: easier to install(in my case) , consumes less resources,
wont slow down my HD's.

What to do , any opinion appreciated

[nikthebak]

Originally posted by alkasecond

On both IDE channels I have HD masters allready.
If I put DVD as slave wont it slow down HD (currently ATA100)?


IDE data transfer always works by the weakest link in the chain, and I don't think there are any ATA100 DVD-ROMs yet. So you would slow down to ATA66. Although I tend to think that ATA100 is a mere gimmick, since no HDD that I am aware of can actually achieve even 66 MB/s. So I doubt that using IDE ATA66 DVD-ROM will affect your HDD performance.

Other issue to consider is that master and slave devices cannot function simultaneously. So you might want to keep your ripping DVD-ROM and your ripping HDD at different IDE channels.


I've heard before that Pioneer makes the best drives , for obvious
reasons I doubth it right now.


Disclaimer: The following statement is made by an extremely displeased Pioneer customer who is a woven anti-Pioneer advocate. Please ignore this post if you find it offensive. However, I try to stay as factual as possible.

Nowadays, practically every manufacturer makes DVD-ROM drives of top quality, except Pioneer. I own a Pioneer DVD-106s. It's noise levels are way over work safety recommendations and it generates incrediable amounts of heat, and is totally unusable for audio ripping. The noise is far too loud to use it for DVD movie watching and it's also unusable as a general CD reader because of the heat. It can actually destroy disks (a proven fact) as well as crash your system by jettisoning great amounts of hot air into your computer case (also a proven fact) heating your system up to ~70 C.

Generally this applies for Pioneer 12-16X drives, slot or tray loaders. And for Pioneer claims that this new 6-series is their most silent set of 12-16X DVD-ROMs ever, the earlier models should easily be able to resurrect the dead.

And it rips audio at 2.4x at EAC secure mode.

Need I say more ;).

Edit:

I forgot to mention that you can't slow x06 Pioneers down with CD-Bremse and that they seem to be getting either lowest or second lowest ratings in 16X DVD-ROM performance tests :rolleyes:.

[Emp3r0r]

If you got scsi I see no reason to go for anything else but scsi again. I don't think there is much of a price difference between scsi and ide when it comes to dvd drives (last time I checked). scsi is superior and well keep you machine fast even when using your dvd-rom.

[alkasecond]

If SCSI then what make?
Except pioneer of course.

As per ata100 versus ata66 , you forgot about 2MB buffer on the
drive.It speeds things up quite a bit , and my drives buffered
read speed exceeds 80MB/s (not possible with ata66).

[DagMan]

look here cdrinfo.com (http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Articles/Specific.asp?ArticleHeadline=DVD-Rom%20Roundup%20Vol3&Series=0) there is a great test with the newest DVD-Drive`s !!!


DagMan

[Emp3r0r]

i've had a teac for years, still works great, never buffer underrun even on my slow p2 350, while watching divx etc.