Dvd/rw Crives

[starfox_2100]

Hi All

I burn a lot of DVD’s on my PC. At the monment I have a 1 burner.

I am planning on installing 3 burners altogether. So that I can burn disks at the same time.

Please could you tell me if this is possible.

The spec of my system is:

P4 1.5Ghz
512MB SDRAM PC133
80GB HDD

I am planning on buying 3 NEC 3500A DVD+/-RW Dual Layer 8.5Gb 16x Writer drives

thanks......

[alc6379]

You're not ever going to want to burn more than one disc at the same time.

Reason being, the IDE channel is really taxed throwing all of that data back and forth. Without an IDE controller card, your setup would be like this:

• Primary Master: Hard drive
• Primary Slave: DVD burner
• Secondary Master: DVD burner
• Secondary Slave: DVD burner

If you do that, you're going to end up with a lot of badly burnt discs. If you can even find a program that will allow you to use multiple burners, the IDE channels are going to be so clogged up, it will be a slow, and error-prone process to burn multiple DVDs at once.

As it is, you should pretty much stick to getting drives that are faster, and have higher storage capacity. That's the safest way to ensure that you're not wasting your time and your discs.

[Catweazle]

There's only really two reasons I can think of for burning that amount of DVDs.

If you are producing DVDs in commercial quantities for sale, then you be better off using a dedicated machine for the task. DVD copying machines can be purchased which produce multiple copies simultaneously. The more copies produced, the more expensive the machine of course.

http://www.mediacopy.co.uk/cd_duplicators.htm

If you're burning that many DVDs because you're pirating them, then I don't want to help you! But I couldn't even if I wanted to, because that PC is completely unsuited to the job!

[starfox_2100]

The reason I need more drives is because I make a lot of home movies and burn them to DVD.

Also, I think Nero can burn using multiple drives is this true?

[Catweazle]

As Alex has indicated, using multiple drives to simultaneously burn DVDs would be troublesome on a PC, particularly on a moderately powered one such as yours. The idea is not really feasible.

[starfox_2100]

Well thanks for the advice

I also checked out the link for the DVD duplicators, but there very expensive.

Looks like I’ll just stick to 1 drive

[thespy]

Hi All

I burn a lot of DVD’s on my PC. At the monment I have a 1 burner.

I am planning on installing 3 burners altogether. So that I can burn disks at the same time.

Please could you tell me if this is possible.

The spec of my system is:

P4 1.5Ghz
512MB SDRAM PC133
80GB HDD

I am planning on buying 3 NEC 3500A DVD+/-RW Dual Layer 8.5Gb 16x Writer drives

thanks......

Hi, if you've got enough spareconnectors on your IDE cable/s ...yes you can, now as far as your writers, i would suggest the Pioneer 108, same speck , but in my eyes a more reliable drive, as with a Plextor, or even the Liteon..If possible upgrade your ram to 1gb to acomodate the extra work your pc is going to do...Have fun..Dave

If you by cheap, you get cheap, but you could also loose sleep...think..1st

[starfox_2100]

If I were to build a new system from what kind of spec. What should I go for.

[Catweazle]

What is the new system intended for please? Different purposes would require different components.

If the system is intended for producing large amounts of DVD copies, then there are only two realistic alternatives available:

1. Purchase a duplicating machine.
2. Contract a duplicating service to do the job for you.

If you intend to produce large quantities of different DVDs then you could add another controller card and more drives, as thespy has suggested, but as Alex mentioned earlier you'll most likely end up with lots of 'bad burns' anyway. I'm also unaware of any software designed for burning multiple DVDs concurrently or in unattended 'batch' fashion.