Life expectancy of a burner?
 

I was wondering what sort of life expectancy one can reasonable expect
from an ide cd burner. I am on my second cd burner, a Mitsumi 40-24-48
burner. After 6 months and perhaps 200 cd's burned, it is failing. I can
only burn smaller iso's (under 500mb) as anything bigger will cause an
error. It also wont read files beyond a certain point. My first cd burner
(a Yamaha 8-4-24) developed the same problem but it seemed to go away
after a while. This problem appears to be mechanical and appeared after
being left idle several months. Eventually, the problem went away
(something loosened up in the drive?). With the Mitsumi, I have had it in
constant use (not necessarily daily) and never had an extended period of
non-use.

After perhaps 400 cd's burned, the Yamaha burner was toast, no longer even
recognized by the controller. I must say the Mitsumi is a major
disappointment, but even the Yamaha seems like it should have had a longer
life.

I have teac burners that have duplicated many thousands of CDs each over the
last 3 years.They are in duplication towers and ar worked hard almost every
day with no problems.

I don't know much about mitsumi but I do know that those old 4X and 8X
Yamaha burners (that were suppost to be the best) were CRAP.

Your problem may be with cooling.You need to keep the burners cool for long
burning sessions.Maybe you might want to consider an external writer next
time.It may help.

Also dust and smoking can cause problems to.

Good Luck
Troy



farqua wrote in message
...
I was wondering what sort of life expectancy one can reasonable expect
from an ide cd burner. I am on my second cd burner, a Mitsumi 40-24-48
burner. After 6 months and perhaps 200 cd's burned, it is failing. I can
only burn smaller iso's (under 500mb) as anything bigger will cause an
error. It also wont read files beyond a certain point. My first cd burner
(a Yamaha 8-4-24) developed the same problem but it seemed to go away
after a while. This problem appears to be mechanical and appeared after
being left idle several months. Eventually, the problem went away
(something loosened up in the drive?). With the Mitsumi, I have had it in
constant use (not necessarily daily) and never had an extended period of
non-use.

After perhaps 400 cd's burned, the Yamaha burner was toast, no longer even
recognized by the controller. I must say the Mitsumi is a major
disappointment, but even the Yamaha seems like it should have had a longer
life.

Heat is the big drive-killer, many OEM systems have little or no cooling.
Assuming a well-cooled and reasonably dust/smoke free room, most burners
should last for several thousand cycles.



"farqua" wrote in message
...
I was wondering what sort of life expectancy one can reasonable expect
from an ide cd burner. I am on my second cd burner, a Mitsumi 40-24-48
burner. After 6 months and perhaps 200 cd's burned, it is failing. I can
only burn smaller iso's (under 500mb) as anything bigger will cause an
error. It also wont read files beyond a certain point. My first cd burner
(a Yamaha 8-4-24) developed the same problem but it seemed to go away
after a while. This problem appears to be mechanical and appeared after
being left idle several months. Eventually, the problem went away
(something loosened up in the drive?). With the Mitsumi, I have had it in
constant use (not necessarily daily) and never had an extended period of
non-use.

After perhaps 400 cd's burned, the Yamaha burner was toast, no longer even
recognized by the controller. I must say the Mitsumi is a major
disappointment, but even the Yamaha seems like it should have had a longer
life.

typed:

I was wondering what sort of life expectancy one can reasonable expect
from an ide cd burner. I am on my second cd burner, a Mitsumi 40-24-48
burner. After 6 months and perhaps 200 cd's burned, it is failing. I
can only burn smaller iso's (under 500mb) as anything bigger will
cause an error. It also wont read files beyond a certain point. My
first cd burner (a Yamaha 8-4-24) developed the same problem but it
seemed to go away after a while. This problem appears to be
mechanical and appeared after being left idle several months.
Eventually, the problem went away (something loosened up in the
drive?). With the Mitsumi, I have had it in constant use (not
necessarily daily) and never had an extended period of non-use.

After perhaps 400 cd's burned, the Yamaha burner was toast, no longer
even recognized by the controller. I must say the Mitsumi is a major
disappointment, but even the Yamaha seems like it should have had a
longer life.

I used to have Plextor 8432, now my friend has it. It's about 3 years old
and still works like a charm. It's slow, but reliable.

farqua scribbled in
:

I was wondering what sort of life expectancy one can reasonable
expect from an ide cd burner. I am on my second cd burner, a Mitsumi
40-24-48 burner. After 6 months and perhaps 200 cd's burned, it is
failing. I can only burn smaller iso's (under 500mb) as anything
bigger will cause an error.
[snip]

I have a Panasonic SCSI 4x writer that still works after 5+ years.
Granted, it was retired to my wife's machine more than 2 years ago and
I haven't burned much with it lately, but it still works as well as
day #1.


--
Brian
(ditch underscore and spam to reply)

"Brian Hillegass" wrote in message
...
farqua scribbled in
:

I was wondering what sort of life expectancy one can reasonable
expect from an ide cd burner. I am on my second cd burner, a Mitsumi
40-24-48 burner. After 6 months and perhaps 200 cd's burned, it is
failing. I can only burn smaller iso's (under 500mb) as anything
bigger will cause an error.
[snip]

I have a Panasonic SCSI 4x writer that still works after 5+ years.
Granted, it was retired to my wife's machine more than 2 years ago and
I haven't burned much with it lately, but it still works as well as
day #1.


--
Brian
(ditch underscore and spam to reply)

I have an original TDK, their first drive, 8/4/32x. Its now in its 3rd PC,
and still works just fine. Thats the original drive, so you'd just imagine
that the 1st drive from a company would have some problems, but, nope, its
perfect.

farqua wrote:

I was wondering what sort of life expectancy one can reasonable expect
from an ide cd burner. I am on my second cd burner, a Mitsumi 40-24-48
burner. After 6 months and perhaps 200 cd's burned, it is failing. I can
only burn smaller iso's (under 500mb) as anything bigger will cause an
error. It also wont read files beyond a certain point. My first cd burner
(a Yamaha 8-4-24) developed the same problem but it seemed to go away
after a while. This problem appears to be mechanical and appeared after
being left idle several months. Eventually, the problem went away
(something loosened up in the drive?). With the Mitsumi, I have had it in
constant use (not necessarily daily) and never had an extended period of
non-use.

My first burner, a Philips CDD522 from 1995 doesn't work with my current
PC but I'm not sure that it isn't a software issue. The Plextor 820 that
replaced it still works fine after nearly 5 years although it is fussy
about media and only really works with Taiyo Yuden discs.

I had a Philips based HP burner go wrong after just a couple of years
but the Plextor burners that I use have been very trouble free for up to
5 years in some cases.

Cheers.

James.