My burner is dead

[mulanone]

I think my burner is dead (RIP). Can anyone tell me about any affordable but efficient brand of DVD burners (under $100)? I'm thinking of getting this one: Liteon SHM165H6S 16X Lightscribe. It got some good reviews. What do you guys think?

[rahzel]

if lightscribe is of no use to you, then don't bother getting a drive that has the technology, as they usually cost more money.

imo, currently the best burners on the market are (starting with the best):
pioneer dvr-111
benq dw1650/55 (very hard to find nowadays)
lg h22l
Liteon SHM 165H6S (or any lite-on drive with hypertuning)
plextor px-760

each drive is better at certain things however. the dvr-111d has excellent write quality for both single layer and dual layer media, and is also a good cd writer. however, it is a lousy scanner (testing for quality etc).
the benq dw1650/55 has the best media compatibility by far and its an excellent scanner and reader. but its not a very good cd writer, the pioneer generally has slightly better write quality and again, its hard to find.
the LG drive is a lightscribe drive; theres a similar model without lightscribe (the h22n) but i heard mixed reviews of that particular model. anyway, it has good write quality for DVD+R media (not so good with DVD-R media), its an 18x drive (thats just a marketing gimmick imo, but LG drives do tend to be quite fast anyway). not a good scanner.
the plextor drive is probably the most expensive. but it has decent write quality, it does disc quality testing, its a good cd writer and plextor probably has the best build quality and will probably be the most reliable.

edit: actually, that particular lite-on drive is pretty good. i wasnt a fan of their drives in the past, but they've added a technology similar to BenQ's solidburn technology called hypertuning. it automatically finds the optimal write strategy for media (if enabled). i heard that it should only be enabled for single layer media, though. lite-on drives are also good scanners, good readers and probably good cd-writers as well.

[Experi-Mentor]

the "liteon shm165h6s" is a good choice.
liteon's are usually great readers.
also : nec (great long-life burner), pioneer (great reader & burner) & benq (good all-rounder).
it's up to you & what your budget can handle. they're all good drives

[Experi-Mentor]

if "burning" is the only fault with your drive, then concider keeping it as a "reader" only. waste not - want not

[Gary D]

My NEC 3550 is an awesome burner and reader of ARccOS discs. I do not have to recycle the tray in DVD D when reading with it as it picks up its speed very quickly. Even now, (after 1000s of rips,burns,&scans), it is my # 1 workhorse!

If you are keeping your old burner as a reader, I would ask Chewy to recommend a good burner. He has the "force" when it comes to pairing up readers and burners! He usually finds the best combination to get the maximum life out of them.

My combination is LG 4163 and a NEC 3550. When the NEC won't read a disc, the LG will about 75% of the time. (The other 25% is because the disc is scratched or just plain unplayable anywhere)

[mulanone]

Thanks all for your input. I'll be purchasing the Lite-On model. Let's hope this one doesn't fail me!

Oh one last question if anyone see this post. Do I have to uninstall my existing drivers, firmware, etc. for the dead burner? Will these conflict with the new burner? If so, how would I do this?

[cynthia]

Just throw out the old one and make sure that you set the jumpers on the back the same as the old one on the new one. When the computer starts up - windows will install everything. It's also a good thing to check if there is a new firmware to install for the new burner. A DMA check is also worth the time.

[ed klein]

AND, make sure you have 80 leads, 40 pins IDE cables in your computer, primary and secondary IDE cables.

Real cheap and worth the effort when you have the case open.