Optical Storage
We'll wrap up this storage guide with the DVDR solutions available. There aren't any HD-DVD or Blu-Ray optical drives showing up in our RTPE just yet. As soon as they become more readily available, you'll see them listed here. We are aware of exactly one vendor currently offering a Blu-Ray drive, TigerDirect, and the price of roughly $1000 for the Pioneer BDR-101A is far more than we are willing to consider recommending. Instead, we suggest you sit tight and wait things out to find out which standard emerges victorious; hopefully, prices will also become more reasonable while you wait.
Now let's take a look at the DVDR drives. There are quite a few drives that are listed here, making a solid recommendation slightly difficult as there are many drives that work very well. DVD burners have become a commodity item, so for most people the differences between manufacturers are very small. That being the case, we generally recommend going with the best price you can find. Please don't hold it against us if we don't specifically suggest one of your favorites.
First, there's the ever-so-popular NEC 16X ND-3550A [RTPE: ND-3550A] on sale for about $36 shipped. There is also the Pioneer 16X DVR-111D [RTPE: DVR-111D] which is going for about $37 shipped. If you want a few extras, the BenQ 16X DW1655 [RTPE: DW1655] features LightScribe technology. At the moment, this drive is going for about $42 shipped.
Again, there are many popular choices that warrant mention, and we've tried to point just a few of them out. And once again, that wraps up our Storage Price Guide. Thanks for reading, and as always we are open to suggestions on how to make these guides more useful to you, our readers.
We'll wrap up this storage guide with the DVDR solutions available. There aren't any HD-DVD or Blu-Ray optical drives showing up in our RTPE just yet. As soon as they become more readily available, you'll see them listed here. We are aware of exactly one vendor currently offering a Blu-Ray drive, TigerDirect, and the price of roughly $1000 for the Pioneer BDR-101A is far more than we are willing to consider recommending. Instead, we suggest you sit tight and wait things out to find out which standard emerges victorious; hopefully, prices will also become more reasonable while you wait.
Now let's take a look at the DVDR drives. There are quite a few drives that are listed here, making a solid recommendation slightly difficult as there are many drives that work very well. DVD burners have become a commodity item, so for most people the differences between manufacturers are very small. That being the case, we generally recommend going with the best price you can find. Please don't hold it against us if we don't specifically suggest one of your favorites.
Again, there are many popular choices that warrant mention, and we've tried to point just a few of them out. And once again, that wraps up our Storage Price Guide. Thanks for reading, and as always we are open to suggestions on how to make these guides more useful to you, our readers.
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beoba - Monday, July 17, 2006 - link
It'd be nice if, for the hard drive pages, there were a scatter plot showing capacity/price values across all drives and capacities, such that one could see trends in pricing across the different capacity tiers. (In other words: visually determine if, say, it were more economical to get a 300gb instead of a 250gb in a given month)Crassus - Monday, July 17, 2006 - link
Are there any SATA-attached optical drives out on the market or is everything still PATA?Seems that more and more motherboard makers drop the number of available PATA connectors while adding tons of SATA ones.
rrcn - Monday, July 17, 2006 - link
There are only two optical drives that I know of which use a SATA interface: both from Plextor -- the PX-716SA/SW and the PX-755SA. I wasn't aware they weren't in the RTPE, but I'll get them added as soon as possible. If I can find any others, I'll also have those added as well.--Haider Farhan
CrystalBay - Monday, July 17, 2006 - link
I think it would be useful to add external storage and external optical storage as well...rrcn - Monday, July 17, 2006 - link
We've never had a request for external storage devices, but if we receive more feedback regarding this, we'll see about getting external storage components at least added into the RTPE. Also, we try to mainly cover the basics in every one of our price guides because really, we can go on forever covering every single component out there. I cannot make any promises, but I'll pass your suggestion along and see what can be done. :-)--Haider Farhan
Whohangs - Tuesday, July 18, 2006 - link
I would like to see external storage components on the list also.gofor55 - Monday, July 17, 2006 - link
Any chance you can include notebook hard drives in this guide next time?rrcn - Monday, July 17, 2006 - link
As soon as they're added into the RTPE, we'll gladly do so.I probably should have noted that in the guide before it went live, but I have gone ahead and done so now.
--Haider Farhan
Calin - Monday, July 17, 2006 - link
Not all DVD drives are created equal - by example, the Teac drives can not write DVD-RAM, while the LG ones can. While this is probably no show stopper for anybody, it might be nice to know beforehandJarredWalton - Monday, July 17, 2006 - link
Having never used DVD-RAM, I figure anyone that needs it for whatever purpose is well aware of the fact. I use relatively inexpensive DVDRs and burn stuff at 8X rather than 16X (just to be safe), and I've used quite a few DVDR drives without problems. I think we've reached the point where it's a lot like CDR support - maybe a few people still worry about that, but for me any CDR capable DVDR drive is sufficient for my needs. Anyway, there are about 5 (or more) DVDRs in the $35-$45 price range that are worth considering. Get whichever one you fancy. :)