Peter's Blog

Wife wanted me to copy some DVD's, finally giving me an excuse to buy a DVD writer. After some contemplation in PC World decided on an OEM LG GSA-4167B 16x 'Super Multi Format' which was £35 with no software, manual or even screws, which didn't bother me as I have a copy of Nero 7 Premium. It is internal, to go in my desktop PC. I toyed with getting an external USB one at £60 to use with my laptop but decided I wouldn't burn DVD's that often and to save myself £25. I can always create images on the external hard disk and write them using the desktop.

This review calls the drive a 'safe buy', one of the worlds fastest writers but a little slow reading. Don't care so much about speed if it burns reliably (unless I wanted the worlds fasted coaster maker).

I put the drive in the desktop pc but kept the old DVD-ROM installed so it now has two drives. Nero gives a nice DVD copy option that simply copies from one drive to the other. There is a verify check box to turn on, insert two disks and press go. It takes about half an hour to burn and verify the disk but it is so nice not having to swap disks half way. The disks I am copying have no copy protection so no problems there.

I grabbed a spindle of 25 Philips DVD-R's, avoiding no-name brands for something hopefully more reliable. It was only when I got home I realised that they were 8x Single layer and can only hold a paltry 4.7G or a two hour film. Never mind, the disks I am copying are single layer. If I want to blow my four hour epic masterpiece baby videos to dvd I'll have to buy more disks.

Now I am running through the possible uses I might get around to one day:

• blow home videos to DVD rather than VideoCD.
• finally blow wedding video to DVD.
• Rip all my CD's using my neat two-disk setup and copy mpeg library to DVD for backup. Can any ripping software handle two drives intelligently?
• Backup 3000 photo's to half a DVD
• Download knoppix DVD version and give it a spin.
• blow TV shows recorded from hauppauge nova-t usb to DVD: actually I probably won't bother, I'd just wait for the repeats.
• Figure out what dvd+/-W+R//-RAM means and whether it matters.