Double Layer DVD Burner

[cmdmfr]

I am not great at using computers I want to get an external dual layer DVD Burner but there are not many reviews on line and the reviews that are on line are not positive. I assume that this is a relatively new product and has not been on the market long. just would like to know I any one has had any experience with the product and what they think about it also what brand they may have

 

[MULTIZ321]

Hi Cm,

I don't have any personal experience with DVD Burners but I thought this review article would provide some guidance in making a choice.

External DVD Burners: Reviews and Comparisons - From Top Ten Reviews/ Electronics/ toptenreviews.com


Richard

 

[sjsharkie]

I am not great at using computers I want to get an external dual layer DVD Burner but there are not many reviews on line and the reviews that are on line are not positive. I assume that this is a relatively new product and has not been on the market long. just would like to know I any one has had any experience with the product and what they think about it also what brand they may have

They've been around a while. When they first came out, the DL recordable disc price was pretty cost prohibitive -- preventing widespread adoption. Lossy compression was used to squeeze more content on a disc rather than spend the large dollars for DL media.

Price has come down quite a bit now, but with faster internet speeds coupled with cheaper and more widely available digital and cloud storage, I think there is less consumer interest and therefore less review experience.

Plextor was super popular when I was burning a lot of DVDs years back. They offered frequent firmware updates and trouble free disc burning (e.g. no dvd coasters). Can't say what the market is like now since I haven't been burning DVDs consistently for some time.

-ryan

 

[Clemson Fan]

I am not great at using computers I want to get an external dual layer DVD Burner but there are not many reviews on line and the reviews that are on line are not positive. I assume that this is a relatively new product and has not been on the market long. just would like to know I any one has had any experience with the product and what they think about it also what brand they may have

They've been around for probably 10+ years. With high capacity USB thumb drives, micros SD cards, cloud storage, etc. DVD's are soon going to be fairly obsolete. Most new computers nowadays don't even have DVD drives.

What do you want to use it for? I'm thinking the only remaining decent use of DVD's is possibly to burn home movies.

 

[Kal]

I would focus your efforts on using USB thumb drives if you can. That technology has pretty much replaced DVDs (single layer or double layer).

I have a dual layer DVD burner but haven't used it for years. I also have a Blu-ray burner but don't use that one much either.

 

[cmdmfr]

DVD

Clem what I wanted to do was bur pictures on the disk. I have CDs and DVD and just want to put them on a high capacity DVD so I only have a few disk. I have seen that the thumb drives are mowing down in price and that is the way to go I see some of the 64 and 128 thumb drives are reasonably priced and much easier to store and carry. Now that I have read your comment and what I have heard from others I am going to use the thumb drives. Thanks for the help.

 

[dioxide45]

We have a DL DVD burner. We used it quite a bit when we first got it, but not so much now. Burning to a disk is slow compared to a USB thumb drive. We also have lots of thumb drives, in varying capacities, laying around.

I have since purchased (a couple years ago) a Bluray burner. It is much smaller and lighter than that old DL DVD burner. It is powered only from the USB port where the DL DVD burner had an external power supply. I use the Bluray player as an optical drive on our Mac Mini and was used quite a bit to rip our entire CD collection in to iTunes. The drive also gives us the ability to burn home videos in HD that we can watch our our Bluray player. Though I don't have any software at the moment that is capable of doing so on our Mac Mini.

If you are simply wanting to view the photos on a TV, you may be able to use a NAS device as long as your TV is connected to your LAN. Or perhaps if you have a PlayStation, DirecTV or other type of device that can view photos on a media server. This eliminates the need to copy the photos to the thumb drive in order to be viewed. If the drive is for backup, you may still be best with a NAS or external hard drive that does automatic back ups. If you need portability, the thumb drive is probably the best option.

 

[Phydeaux]

I would focus your efforts on using USB thumb drives if you can. That technology has pretty much replaced DVDs (single layer or double layer).

I have a dual layer DVD burner but haven't used it for years. I also have a Blu-ray burner but don't use that one much either.

Agree with this.

 

[Kal]

I have stacks of CDs and DVDs which contain software, data files and images which I have burned myself. Now I'm starting to be concerned about the long-term life of that media. Seems to me the life has been stated to be about 5-10 years. Lots of them are in that time range. Not sure where to go from here as my guess is much of that software called for installation from a CD/DVD.

Good grief, looking at my legacy stuff, I still have the Windows 95 install disk. I know there is no Windows 3.1 install media as I long ago discarded all the boxes of 3 1/2" "floppy disks". The 5 1/4" floppies were tossed many years ago.

 

[Passepartout]

If you are going to use thumb drives, check your USB socket(s). If your computer is fairly recent, it may have USB 3 port(s). If so, the data transfer rates are MUCH faster than the older USB 1 & 2 ports. USB 3 ports are identifiable by a colored 'bar' inside it, or a 3 beside it.

Jim

 

[dioxide45]

I would focus your efforts on using USB thumb drives if you can. That technology has pretty much replaced DVDs (single layer or double layer).

I have a dual layer DVD burner but haven't used it for years. I also have a Blu-ray burner but don't use that one much either.

I have looked in to trying to possibly sell our DVD DL drive on EBay. The problem is that looking at completed auctions doesn't look like it is worth my time. Plus, I am not even sure where it is now, buried in the back of a closet somewhere.

I have stacks of CDs and DVDs which contain software, data files and images which I have burned myself. Now I'm starting to be concerned about the long-term life of that media. Seems to me the life has been stated to be about 5-10 years. Lots of them are in that time range. Not sure where to go from here as my guess is much of that software called for installation from a CD/DVD.

Good grief, looking at my legacy stuff, I still have the Windows 95 install disk. I know there is no Windows 3.1 install media as I long ago discarded all the boxes of 3 1/2" "floppy disks". The 5 1/4" floppies were tossed many years ago.

When looking at some old burned CDs I had when going through all of our music CDs, I found some where the actual silver layer had black spots. They were unreadable. A lot of the commercially produced music CDs that were at least twice as old (10-20 years) were fine and burned with no problem, but those CDR/W disck were junk. I think over the years we have bought some CDR/W disks that were better than others. The cheaper ones are probably the ones that have broke down, though I don't know for sure.

 

[Kal]

...When looking at some old burned CDs I had when going through all of our music CDs, I found some where the actual silver layer had black spots. They were unreadable. A lot of the commercially produced music CDs that were at least twice as old (10-20 years) were fine and burned with no problem, but those CDR/W disck were junk. I think over the years we have bought some CDR/W disks that were better than others. The cheaper ones are probably the ones that have broke down, though I don't know for sure.

Very interesting! That would explain why there is a big price difference between CD vendors. This whole issue makes my head hurt. Just the thought of transferring the content of the old CDs would be a major incentive to rethink the value of the content. Images, valuable! Old software, for the most part, not so good. But just think, 2005 is already 10 years old!! The digital image disks from the year 2000 time share trips are important....I think to at least me and my DW?

 

[cmdmfr]

Jim I have to agree with you I have a computer about 9 months old and I noticed that on the bCk 3 of the USB ports hVe a 3 on them an duo front I have 2 Nd one said it is a fast port for down loading so it also must be a 3.0 port. But I am sure I am going to use thumb drives less room and cheaper then dvd disk. With out getting disk I can delete pictures and correct them and reload them on the thumb drive.

 

[SMHarman]

Very interesting! That would explain why there is a big price difference between CD vendors. This whole issue makes my head hurt. Just the thought of transferring the content of the old CDs would be a major incentive to rethink the value of the content. Images, valuable! Old software, for the most part, not so good. But just think, 2005 is already 10 years old!! The digital image disks from the year 2000 time share trips are important....I think to at least me and my DW?

And while you are doing that think about any mini dvi tapes and other camcorder tapes before they glue themselves together.

Get a synology raid nas and a western digital my pocket.
Put everything on the NAS. Backup the NAS to a my pocket and put that somewhere else. Friends / relatives. Updated the pocket monthly quarterly or so.

 

[Kal]

I have all files since maybe 2003 backed up on my server and earlier digital files on CD/DVD. My biggest challenge is to develop a workable retrieval system for quickly locating any files.

The file generation rate has substantially increased with the advent of high quality smartphone capability. That now has become a BIG problem as it's way too easy to take 10-50 images for a single event. Really! How many of those images are real keepers that will endure time. Many "great" images taken today are not so valuable when viewed 30 days later.

So the problem for me is data management rather than hardware solutions. However, the clock keeps ticking for my burned legacy CD/DVDs. Gotta deal with them or they will soon be toast.