[Workaphobia]

In a few days I'm going to be getting new CD-RW and DVD-RW drives, and of course I want to make sure that they're compatible with linux and relatively reliable first. The choices I'm looking at (or more accurately, the models that my father has suggested):

Pioneer DVR-A09XL
Sony DRU800A
Maddog MD-16XDVD9

Iomagic 1522452
Benq 5232X

I have little experience with cd/dvd burning, and have never even attempted it under linux, but I don't want any nasty surprises when I'm ready to try it. I just want to know which company is the Nvidia of the cd world.

My current drive is slightly annoying in that sometimes it does not begin reading a live cd fast enough, and the BIOS proceeds to the MBR. Other times, it has a fatal I/O error when trying to load parts of the cd.

In case it's relevant, I'm running an AMD Athlon XP cpu on an MSI board, with 256MB RAM.

Thanks for your input.

[AlexK]

Im running a Pioneer 109 drive just fine under linux. I haven't tried burning just yet. However DVD movies and DIVX movies seem to run just fine. The difference between the 109 and A09 are that the A09 comes with lots of software (Windows only) and costs in Australia roughly twice as much. (I paid AU$80 for the 109, while the A09 costs $150)

For your DVDRW drives, I would recommend the Pioneer over the Sony in terms of performance. Another thing you should be aware of is that the Sony DVD burners are rebadged Liteon burners. Reliability wise, I normally would have gone with a Sony, but since Liteon products are sub-par, I cant trust them at all.

CDRW's shouldnt be a problem, one question, If you are getting a high speed DVD burner, do you really need a CD-RW as well? The pioneer one can do 40x burns (1 700 MB cd in under 2 mins @ 40x vs. 1.5 mins for 52x). However, based on the CDRW models you have gives, I probably would go with the Iomagic as the Benq optical drives are known to be problematic under both linux and windows.

[ozar]

I always run Plextor units and like them alot, but they'll cost you more than what some want to pay. I'm not sure they are really worth the difference in price, either. It probably depends on the individual and how they use them.

[unobtanium]

I also run a Pioneer 109 no probs with Suse Ubuntoo or FC3.

[Weedman]

for dvd burning my sony DRU-710A does the job good

and for my cdrw burner, liteon, i have had no problems with it and it works with linux.

i would never recommend a benq cd burner to anybody. we got ours ages ago and it did not burn from the first minute of using it.

[Workaphobia]

Thanks for the advice - I'm kind of oblivious when it comes to hardware, so all of this is fresh info. I guess I'll go with Pioneer and Iomagic then.

To answer your question about needing both CD and DVD: Actually I agree that it's sort of redundant, but my dad insists, and I'm not the one paying.