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.