internal or external dvd writer?

was goin to get the internal drive as it is cheaper however had a
thought..if i get external would i be able to burn to my existing cd writer
and the dvd writer at the same time and could this also be done if was an
internal writer?

thanks
Dave

"Dave" writes:

was goin to get the internal drive as it is cheaper however had a
thought..if i get external would i be able to burn to my existing cd writer
and the dvd writer at the same time and could this also be done if was an
internal writer?

It's ill-advised to try simultaneous burning with any pair of
writers--internal or external. You'd be asking way to much of the
source disk's bandwidth, and the likelihood of either very slow speeds
or completely failed burns would be quite high.

If you are thinking of being able to make 2 copies of CD's at the same
time, I don't think that's possible with your typical burning
software. Mass duplicators do exist, but I believe they run rather
specialized firmware/software for doing this, and I also believe
they're tpyically SCSI based.

It's an interesting topic though, and I'd welcome those more
in-the-know to contribute more info.

Best Regards,
--
Todd H.
http://www.toddh.net/

On Thu, 8 Jan 2004 21:35:04 -0000, "Dave"
wrote:

was goin to get the internal drive as it is cheaper however had a
thought..if i get external would i be able to burn to my existing cd writer
and the dvd writer at the same time and could this also be done if was an
internal writer?

thanks
Dave


There is no benefit to having it external unless you need it portable,
and it will be slower on an external bus, but not much given it's an
optical drive.

On Thu, 08 Jan 2004 22:59:57 GMT Sat down laughing as it's habit to
keep on crying then kony wrote :

On Thu, 8 Jan 2004 21:35:04 -0000, "Dave"
wrote:

was goin to get the internal drive as it is cheaper however had a
thought..if i get external would i be able to burn to my existing cd writer
and the dvd writer at the same time and could this also be done if was an
internal writer?

thanks
Dave


There is no benefit to having it external unless you need it portable,
and it will be slower on an external bus, but not much given it's an
optical drive.

I don't know about that as I don't have an external USB Burner but USB
2.00 can handle a lot of bandwidth?



--
Free Windows/PC help,
http://www.geocities.com/sheppola/trouble.html
email shepATpartyheld.de
Free songs download,
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/8/nomessiahsmusic.htm

2 HD, 2 burning programs, burning 1 Cd with data from HD 1 and another CD
from HD 2 still asking to much from the system and a high likelyhood of
errors and burn failure?

"kony" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 8 Jan 2004 21:35:04 -0000, "Dave"
wrote:

was goin to get the internal drive as it is cheaper however had a
thought..if i get external would i be able to burn to my existing cd
writer
and the dvd writer at the same time and could this also be done if was an
internal writer?

thanks
Dave


There is no benefit to having it external unless you need it portable,
and it will be slower on an external bus, but not much given it's an
optical drive.

Shep© writes:
On Thu, 08 Jan 2004 22:59:57 GMT Sat down laughing as it's habit to
keep on crying then kony wrote :

On Thu, 8 Jan 2004 21:35:04 -0000, "Dave"
wrote:

was goin to get the internal drive as it is cheaper however had a
thought..if i get external would i be able to burn to my existing cd writer
and the dvd writer at the same time and could this also be done if was an
internal writer?

thanks
Dave


There is no benefit to having it external unless you need it portable,
and it will be slower on an external bus, but not much given it's an
optical drive.

I don't know about that as I don't have an external USB Burner but USB
2.00 can handle a lot of bandwidth?

You are correct. Hi-speed USB2 mode is 480Mbps which is faster than
a UDMA/33 IDE bus 33MB/s = 264Mbps

Comparing the specs of 2 popular 8x Plextor burners shows that the USB
model can actually burst faster than the IDE

http://www.plextor.be/english/products/PX708UF.html
Data Transfer Rate
-- Burst USB 2.0: 480Mbps
USB 1.1: 12Mbps
IEEE 1394 (Firewire): 400Mbps

http://www.plextor.be/english/products/PX708A.html
Data Transfer Rate
-- Burst (UDMA/33) 33MB/s (that's 264Mbps)


All other read/write specs you can see are the same, and quite a bit
lower than the peak transfer rates of either the IDE interface or the
USB2 interface.

This leaves the question of "okay, what is the real world experience
of these specs?" The only variable we haven't accounted for is how
the drivers for UDMA differ from USB as implemented in Windows. I
don't know the answer to that question, but best i can tell, that's
the only thing that could possibly support the possibly-antiquated
notion of a USB-based writer suffering versus and internal one.

I go internal myself for the cost benefit, and relative stability of
the IDE bus. In my experience, the fewer things I hang off the USB
ports in Windows, the more stable my experience.

Best Regards,
--
Todd H.
http://www.toddh.net/

On Thu, 8 Jan 2004 23:28:35 -0000 Sat down laughing as it's habit to
keep on crying then "Dave" wrote :

2 HD, 2 burning programs, burning 1 Cd with data from HD 1 and another CD
from HD 2 still asking to much from the system and a high likelyhood of
errors and burn failure?

If you mean at the same time?Then who knows.Try it on some CDR/W disks

Push the envelope :O


"kony" wrote in message
.. .
On Thu, 8 Jan 2004 21:35:04 -0000, "Dave"
wrote:

was goin to get the internal drive as it is cheaper however had a
thought..if i get external would i be able to burn to my existing cd
writer
and the dvd writer at the same time and could this also be done if was an
internal writer?

thanks
Dave


There is no benefit to having it external unless you need it portable,
and it will be slower on an external bus, but not much given it's an
optical drive.





--
Free Windows/PC help,
http://www.geocities.com/sheppola/trouble.html
email shepATpartyheld.de
Free songs download,
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/8/nomessiahsmusic.htm

"Dave" writes:

2 HD, 2 burning programs, burning 1 Cd with data from HD 1 and another CD
from HD 2 still asking to much from the system and a high likelyhood of
errors and burn failure?

Hell, I don't even wanna run an mp3 audio player when I burn CD's or
DVD's in windows.

Yeah, I think that would increase the likelihood of burn failure, or
at the very least, dumb down the burn rate because of trouble keeping
the write buffers full on teh burn.

--
Todd H.
http://www.toddh.net/

On 08 Jan 2004 17:46:30 -0600, (Todd H.) wrote:


There is no benefit to having it external unless you need it portable,
and it will be slower on an external bus, but not much given it's an
optical drive.

I don't know about that as I don't have an external USB Burner but USB
2.00 can handle a lot of bandwidth?

You are correct. Hi-speed USB2 mode is 480Mbps which is faster than
a UDMA/33 IDE bus 33MB/s = 264Mbps

No, the spec, on paper AND in real life, DEMANDS that it always be
slower. Why? Because it's STILL an IDE device. It's constrained by
the IDE bus just as if attached to the motherboard, then futher slowed
down by processing, buffering of the USB bridge chip, and then again
on the USB bus.



Comparing the specs of 2 popular 8x Plextor burners shows that the USB
model can actually burst faster than the IDE

There are 3 (or 5) possible reasons for this).

1) ATA66 drive

2) SCSI drive (would be faster than USB2 using native SCSI interface,
eliminating USB as with the IDE drives).

3) Windows buffering caused misleading results.

4) They intentionally misrepresented the data rate.

5) Noting the 480Mbps they listed, they were not trying to imply that
it can actually burst at full 480, nor sustain it... there's always a
bit of overhead even if it could "try" to burst high enough to
saturate the bus. "480" is ONLY the speed of the bus, not the drive's
throughput.


http://www.plextor.be/english/products/PX708UF.html
Data Transfer Rate
-- Burst USB 2.0: 480Mbps
USB 1.1: 12Mbps
IEEE 1394 (Firewire): 400Mbps

http://www.plextor.be/english/products/PX708A.html
Data Transfer Rate
-- Burst (UDMA/33) 33MB/s (that's 264Mbps)


All other read/write specs you can see are the same, and quite a bit
lower than the peak transfer rates of either the IDE interface or the
USB2 interface.

As I wrote previously, that's only the speed of the USB2 bus, not the
drive, and especially not when bridging ATAPI to USB2 then
transferring to the motherboard.

This leaves the question of "okay, what is the real world experience
of these specs?" The only variable we haven't accounted for is how
the drivers for UDMA differ from USB as implemented in Windows. I
don't know the answer to that question, but best i can tell, that's
the only thing that could possibly support the possibly-antiquated
notion of a USB-based writer suffering versus and internal one.

NO, as I already mentioned, even with a perfect hardware support with
no additional drives, USB2 would be slower.

IF the drive's I/O is lower than the sustainable I/O of the USB2
controller (both motherboard and bridge chip in external encloser,
which typically peak at 21MBps but often less with cheaper chips),
then there's primarily the latency from bridging the two busses. It's
not a huge difference but only because optical drives are relatively
slow... on a HDD it's much larger difference.


I go internal myself for the cost benefit, and relative stability of
the IDE bus. In my experience, the fewer things I hang off the USB
ports in Windows, the more stable my experience.

Best Regards,

I'm not knocking USB2, it's a great alternative for lowest cost
external drives, but to be clear it's not possible to be higher
performance nor even same performance, but possibly only a very tiny
bit slower than direct IDE or SCSI.

On Thu, 8 Jan 2004 23:28:35 -0000, "Dave"
wrote:

2 HD, 2 burning programs, burning 1 Cd with data from HD 1 and another CD
from HD 2 still asking to much from the system and a high likelyhood of
errors and burn failure?



Errors and burn failure aren't near as likely as having the drives
"burn-proof" feature kick in, that the laser has to stop and start
again a few times waiting for data. I don't recall trying to burn
with two programs and burners simultaneously so I don't know for sure
that it'd work, but if it didn't I suspect it'd be windows' fault more
than anything else.