Does anyone still make "good" DVD / Optical drives ? I had an old 486 machine I used to play CD's in until the motherboard failed at about 12 years of age the drive was working the day before the MB died. I have went through 6 drives in two years they all have quit opening properly. Currently have tried: Sony, 2 NEC, Optiarc, ASUS and Memorex. I think they are all built with a "belt" to work the mechanism that opens and closes the tray. They never work more than 3 months. Sometimes leaving a disk in the drive will help for a while but eventually that stops. Then a paper clip must be used to open the drive. Then a replacement of the drive is required. Any good ones still being made ? Thanks rrrh1 (arch1)
honestly the only real difference anymore is the chipset they use. some use nec, mediatek etc..as a example asus doesnt make their drives anymore liteon makes most of them, pioneer doesnt make theirs either anymore some are optiarcs etc.... personally the last really good drives were the optiarc 7x00 ones like the 7200. now it doesnt really matter which you buy though if you can find them i have REALLY LIKED the samsung 234n models but they are hard to find now. nec normally gives better burn results but they cant properly scan a disc and have trouble ripping certain ones. mediatek is great for scanning but not as quality of a burn. i burn A LOT of discs and i stick with optiarc and samsung personally. imo STAY away from the newer lg drives i hate those. i also dont like the newer liteon drives except for ripping or backing up my legally owned copies of my xbox games. other than that i dont use them. i have a tower with just dvd drives in it it has 4 optiarc 7260's 2 samsung 234n's and 2 liteon ihas drives (for xbox use only) and a old benq 0800 (phillips modded drive to be able to read xbox games). for general use buy the cheapest drives you can that have the features you want like lightscribe etc and then they are disposable imo..
My experience has been the opposite. 2004,through 2008, I went through at least six drives; two NEC, a Pioneer, a BenQ, one LG, and one BTC DVD ROM are those I specifically remember. Two, an NEC 3550 and the Pioneer DVR-219 each lasted less than one week. My current setup includes a Samsung SH-S222L and an LG GSA-H22N and they have been in operation for about two years and still going strong ! I have a backup LG-GSA-H10 that is about four years old and also works perfectly whenever called into service. Perhaps I'm just lucky.
If I was going through 6 drives in 2 years, I would start looking at something else - like a flaky power supply - or a dusty environment. You might have too much ripple or some other anomaly with your PSU. If you have too many exhaust fans pulling lots of air in, air (and dust, hair, dander, tiny critters that eat that dander, and all their waste products) will start being pulled in through every crack and cranny, including through the optical drives. So you might consider adding a case fan in front that draws cool air in.
The problem with 5 of them the tray would not open close properly, they would still burn read a disk if you could get it into and out of the drive. The newer drives have a small rubber drive belt (cost cutter) that operates the tray mechanism, which fails to the point of no longer opening the tray without a straightened paper clip into the emergency eject hole. The older drives were gear driven and sometimes lasted longer than the computer they were installed in. I may try a Samsung or LG since there is almost no difference in price. The other ones aren't doing me much good. Thanks rrrh1 (arch1)
A stuck tray is a big problem with tray load optical drives. Slot load optical drives have another problem, sometimes the disk get stuck in them and are then impossible to remove. I was thinking of buying a reliable new DVD burner, since the slot-load burner in my laptop is giving me problems. After a lot of research I settled on this Liteon Top load dvd writer. It is external and usb powered so it might not be the kind you are looking for, but on the good side, it is top loading, so there is no chance of a stuck tray or stuck disk. You just pop open the lid and it opens like a portable cd player. There is no belt to go bad, no ejecting mechanism at all. I am waiting for Amazon.com to stock it and I will purchase this for myself.
Optical drives are typically less than half the price they were five years ago and to be totally honest, I can't see any difference in the burn quality. The new drives seem to be noisier (perhaps my imagination) but overall, I experience nothing that lends to a feeling that the lower prices automatically translate into a cheaper drive. My LG GSA-4164B was purchased in 2005 and still produces good quality burns when pulled out of semi-retirement.
Can't go wrong with the Samsung drives. I have bought 12 of them in the last 4 years and all of them still work. And they are dirt cheap at Newegg.
ASUS manufactures their own drives but the design is from LiteOn, i.e. they are basically LiteOn drives made by Asus. Personally, LG and Asus are the only drives that have lasted me a long time. The others all went down within a year with the same problems as what you have described.
