I am looking to upgrade my burner and I want a burner (cdrw or dvdrw)that will backup my game cd`s.(kids are rough on the originals). I want to be able to backup my games regardless of the copy protections, the hard part is finding a burner that will do it. I am leaning towards a combo drive because it fits into a single bay instead of using two drives . Does anyone know what burner I should be looking at? Any advice is greatly appriciated,
Thanks!
Ironleg1963

great question mate !
actually i had this problem too, before i bought my burner.
well, a good burner is a burner that should simply burn. so it shouldn't give any errors. for this, it is better if the burner has Buffer Underrun Protection/SMART Burn/or what ever it is called, and higher Buffer Memory (if possible). nowadays every burner has got this Burn Proof protection. but there are only few burner which has higher buffer memory than the traditional 2mb. i reckon i would have bought one of them. but for sake of my budget, i went for an LITEON. it is fast but has the traditional 2mb buffer memory. still i haven't got probs with it though.

YAMAHA burners has got 8mb buffer memory. BENQ has got 8mb and sometimes 4mb. if i had more money i would go for a YAMAHA one as i have heard that it is the burner that techs have heard least amount of tech errors. PLEXTOR is also good, depending on your country a particular burner may be more popular. here in Aus it is the LITEON. i hope our other members would add more. :)

good question once again..

oh, and those DVD Burners. DON'T go for them now!!! their are still new in technology and needs to be more improved. in other words, their technology is not in their golden stage. remember those CD burners came without Burn Proof technologies and stuff like that. like that, there are far more to come and add to the DVD Burner technology. so don't go for them yet.

NO NO NO Combo Drives !! If you use them to both read and write: remember more tear > more wear. It will not last for long. Recommended a DVD ROM and a CD RW. After reading DoG's post: If you still reckons your main priority is to backup games, then unfortunately you will have to buy a DVD RW. I will never, for like another more years. Phew, the YAMAHA don't last for long? Mmm, my little LITEON has a mechanical life of 70,000 hours. :)

What platform are the games for? If its PSX or PS1 then most burners will back the games up. PS2 games you will need a DVD burner for. PC Games can be tricky, i think the best burners out there for pc games at the moment are the plextors. They seem to be able to read and write just about anything.

At the moment i have a BENQ 24x10x40, a pair of yamaha 16x10x40's, an AOPEN 48x12x50 and a Pioneer DVDR A-104. All are reliable and work aith all the common CD/DVD burning software. My personal Fav has got to be the AOPEN- burns perfect at 48x when reading from the SCSI hard drive and the just link tecxnology is a lifesaver if you forget and start MS Office up or something. The Yamaha's are solid and dependable- the 8mb of buffer is pretty good but i find they dont last all that long- after a while they just dont read CD's any more. The Pioneer is sweet. With the latest firmware you can burn a 4.7 gig disk (Around 4.3 gig of data actual space) in just over 30 mins- perfect for PS2 games :D

Out of the lot the AOPEN was the cheapest and performs the best- i think it cost around £45. Pretty damn cheap for a 48x burner.

I would stay away from the DVD/CDR/CDRW combo drives if i was you, they dont perform all that well. The data transfer speeds are slower than advertised and they can be querky as hell.

EDITED: My spelling again and added a bit

Right Now NO BURNER will burn an exact 1:1 copy of SecuRom 4.8 it is impossible to burn because of the physical characteristics of the disc's. Right now blindwrite and alcohol are the only copy programs able to produce a copy that works. The Copy is not 1:1 but they have been able to create another file called a BWA that makes the copy believe the physical characteristics are "present". There are not many burners out there that will do this. ASUS, Lite-On are a couple that have been successful. The important thing is to look for a burner that will do correct EFM alot will but most won't. If it's games you want to back up then try lite-on or asus if it's music cd's try plextor. If you want a really good reference site then try www.cdfreaks.com

I recently bought a Lite-On 48X and also have been using a Plextor 16X. I dont' get coasters. The Plextor has the "burn proof" feature and most burner programs use buffer under-run protection with the Lite-On. Things have sure changed from the old days with my Yamaha SCSI 4X. You couldn't move the mouse while burning, or you'd have a coaster.

Gee, they all seem to be good. Most people go on price, these days. After all, this is all obsolete. We're all waiting for the perfect DVD burner and cheap media.