Plextor DVDRW faulty

[floppybootstomp]

Whelp, I'd always thought Plextor were the best but it seems they are just as prone to failure as all the others if my experience is anything to go by.

I had a Plextor PX 800A DVDRW drive installed in my main AMD machine. It was manufactured in March 2007. It has had what I'd describe as 'Medium' use, it certainly was not used as much as the Asus DVDRW on my main machine.

Over the last few weeks I noticed it sometimes failed to burn DVD's, both data and movie, within Nero 8 using Windows XP. Then it wouldn't burn any DVD's at all. It would still, however, burn audio and data CD's (as opposed to DVD's).

Also tried to burn a data DVD using the Plextor within Linux Mint - no go.

So this evening I swapped out the Plextor for a rather old Samsung DVDRW that I took out of my sister's old scrapped computer. Now although this replacement optical drive is probably five years old I know it's rarely been used to do any burning by my sister so in actual fact it's almost new.

I have just successfully burnt 2 video DVD's from flv files using Nero 8 and also one data DVD with no problems using the Samsung DVDRW.

So it seems the three year old Plextor drive is faulty.

Well I never. I always thought Plextor made superior drives as they charge more money for their product than all the others. Not so, it seems.

In my main machine I have an Asus DVDRW that is at least 4 years old. It does a lot of burning and it's still doing exactly what it should do.

No bias here, merely reporting things as they happen but I think it's the last time I'll spend any extra on an optical drive, a component which in my experience has the highest failure record of any PC component.

 

[TriplexDread]

I had a Plextor years ago. It was a SCSI one, bought an external case for it etc

Lasted me.....22 months then was FUBAR

Cost me, sorry my girlfriend at the time a LOT of money


Never again!!

 

[crazylegs]

Yep no different to any other drive IMO I have had Philips drives last years and I had a Pioneer dvd slotdrive last 7 years being swapped from machine to machine..

Had a couple of samsungs and they been ok but always so damn noisy when spinning up, and quite slow at reading too..
I concur they do fail more than other components, well seem to anyway!

 

[Abarbarian]

I have been replacing drives with Lit-eons since 2004 and every one is still running. Mind you they don't get a fantastic lot of use. I get very few burn failures either in Windows or GNU/Linux.

 

[floppybootstomp]

Pleased to hear that Abarb

Lite-on have had the highest failure rate with me so far though, totalling three since around the year 2000.

Other failures have included: Pioneer; Philips; Samsung; Sony and Asus.

I have come to believe, as with Hard Disks, no one make is better than another, especially with some factories producing drives that are then labelled with several different company's labels.

Nope, I figure it's just luck of the draw and the quality of the factory run at any given period.

Which is why I certainly won't buy another Plextor when they typically charge 50% more than other suppliers.