Plextor 708UF ooooooooh the Colors!

[Sketcher]

Just ordered me one of these: http://www.plextor.com/english/products/708UFspectrum.html

Finally started culling 30GB of images and have decided that tape backup, though nice for disaster recovery isn't quite as handy as disc archiving.

Those of you who run DVD Burners, what do you use and what's good to know about the process? I note that this particular drive, while new and shiny does not support writing to DVD-RAM. Any of you using DVD-RAM writers?

-EDIT More information = I've ordered this particular drive for my use in shop and for backing up my SOHO from time to time (non-photography related). Portability is a must in that respect. The sweet aspect of ordering this for my office is that it's the same drive I've been stalking and I get to give it a solid run before buying my own. Certainly, I'll make good use of my "Company owned" drive but ultimately I separate corporate and personal equipment and purchase the best of breed.

My intended use for the writer is to make backups of my favorite DVD's (and kids DVD's, let them play the copies) and for Archiving my images. Time for me holds a premium value so I'm interested in the latest, fastest capability available (and a few extra dollars were received for Christmas which loosens the death grip on which drives I can consider buying).

[daaaveman]

Which color did you order? Wicked White to match your lenses? This does look like a good burner. May have to pick one up myself.

[evilenglishman]

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[samdring]

Sketcher wrote:
Any of you using DVD-RAM writers?

Use Panasonic LF M621 for both RAM and -R/RW. Consider 'cased' RAM discs likely to have better life span in terms of scratches etc. Works fine and dandy.

[msnow]

I recently got a Phillips DVD +RW for my laptop and I like it very much. I used to burn my images to CDRW but, like Sketcher, have discovered that my hobby has outgrown that media.

I've never heard of DVD RAM and am curious about what it is but maybe I don't want to know (cause I ain't buyin' another one now). As far as software I use Nero to burn EVERYTHING. It seems to use less resources (on Windows) than anything else I've tried and has all of the features I need for a good price.

[clos]

If this is all your going to use it for any DVD burner will do, Englishmen is on the right track. Get an internal internal drive they are cheaper, tend to be bounced around less, and take up less space.

Tip:

I burn my RAW files to DVD by month and erase them off the hard drive. But first I make small size proofs (less than 100Kb files) grouped in the same fashion so I can easily find the RAW files when I need them.

Make double copies and keep one of them off site.

Good luck!

-Clos

[clos]

Sorry Sketcher I just reread your post, "it's on it's way" you say. Your DVD burner is nice indeed and will serve the task at hand. It is more expensive but much more flexible. Good luck!

-Clos

[Sketcher]

Thanks for all the responses guys. I've edited the op to explain my purchase a little better.

1. I have considered internal drives and have determined that portability is a must for me. I do a lot of work out of the office and for friends so having DVD capacity to work with in a mobile package will help mucho.

2. I received some $ for Christmas so am able to consider the more spendy whiz bang drives. Time is also a premium to me so if I can burn a disc in less time, it's worth it for me to spend the extra. Three kids under 3yrs, on call 24hrs for work - it's tough getting time to shoot much less sit in the office making DVD's.

3. Being that this one is actually ordered for my use in office and occasionally at home (edited in original post), I have time to test drive and determine if the performance really is worth the extra cost.

4. This time I ordered the black one. Doh! I'll have to keep in mind that if I do buy a personal copy the "White" drive might be the only "White" I have in my kit if that Dell Deal doesn't come through :D.


Good information you guys are giving me to think about. Thanks for taking the time!

[evilenglishman]

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[Belmondo]

evilenglishman wrote:
it still might have been cheaper to buy a crappy usb2/firewire external CD-RW, remove the drive and put an IDE DVD-r inside ;)

If that requires a screwdriver and any manual dexterity at all, some of us might be completely out of our elelment.

[CyberDyneSystems]

BUT IT'S A PLEXTOR!!!!!

Just because you gear heads are too involved in your lenses,.. doesn't mean you shouldn't know that PLEXTOR is the "L" Of Optical Drives!!! :D

Sketcher is just continuing the trend of fine top of the line products!

Why slap a "Phoenix" DVD-R into your Canon PC????

Way to go Sketcher.. it's been a while since I've purchased a Plextor. I still have all my old ones though,. as they just last and last,.

the server at work has an 8X SCSI unit that was nearly $300.00 new.

[Sketcher]

CyberDyneSystems wrote:
BUT IT'S A PLEXTOR!!!!!

Just because you gear heads are too involved in your lenses,.. doesn't mean you shouldn't know that PLEXTOR is the "L" Of Optical Drives!!! :D

Sketcher is just continuing the trend of fine top of the line products!

Yeah, what he said!! :D Mabye I do have to order this thing in White to get you lens heads to nod approval! LOL :D I'm rolling :). Thanks for letting the masses know what "Plextor" is to the Canonite alphabet CDS! He's right gang, this is the good stuff. Hmm, referring to it as the "L" of Optical Drives; I already feel my nose turning up and an elite aire settling in :eyes. Shhhh.... Somebody's calling me "Luke" and referring to themself as my Father... Oh, heh heh. It's just the tv.

[Sketcher]

evilenglishman wrote:
That drive is VERY expensive, have condidered an internal drive? You can get them for 1/4 of the price of that one.



That lens is VERY expensive, have you considered a non-L lens? you can get them for 1/4 of the price of that one.

[evilenglishman]

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[ashforth]

I recently bought the Plextor 708A to replace a Sony CD burner. The Plextor is a great machine; however, I was backing up with CD's yesterday and had a lot of failures. Finally found the problem was that the Plextor didn't like the AT&T brand CD media. I had some Verbatim CD blanks on hand and they worked flawlessly.

Herb

[Sketcher]

ashforth wrote:
I recently bought the Plextor 708A to replace a Sony CD burner. The Plextor is a great machine; however, I was backing up with CD's yesterday and had a lot of failures. Finally found the problem was that the Plextor didn't like the AT&T brand CD media. I had some Verbatim CD blanks on hand and they worked flawlessly.

Herb

Thanks Herb, good to know about the AT&T media. We run a variety of CD burners and media in-house (though I've never heard of AT&T branded discs) and it's interesting to note how many drives have issues with differing media. Often, reducing write speeds on the problematic burns allows even the low quality discs to churn out w/out becoming coasters. Then again, we have a good old 8x CD-R generic which has never failed us regardless of media. Go figure :).

So why did you choose the Plextor 708A? Keep me posted on your experience with it. I should get the UF model in next week; the only difference between the models being the UF is portable.

[ashforth]

Sketcher-

We've owned Plextor CD drives and found them to be very reliable. My son is a techie and advised that we go for the Plextor since it was an eight speed unit and had received great reviews.

Herb

[Sketcher]

ashforth wrote:
Sketcher-

We've owned Plextor CD drives and found them to be very reliable. My son is a techie and advised that we go for the Plextor since it was an eight speed unit and had received great reviews.

Herb

Gotta love having "in-family" tech support! :D. I have a similar positive experience with you and CDS. I have a number of Plex CD-RW's ranging from an old 8x external to 24x internal which all get along very nicely in my soho.

[Sketcher]

evilenglishman wrote:
Plextor drives are actually considered a cheapo brand when comapred to Pioneer, Panasonic or Sony :)
Your Nick is appropriate here evilenglishman, you're evil. Unless your name is Evilen Glishman ;).

[Sketcher]

I tend to like keeping warranties in effect for most gear purchases but there's some solid information available that TDK sells a rebadged Plextor 708A which can be had for approx. $130.00 from Staples after MIR.

Literally a couple line changes in the TDK Firmware to reflect Plextor nomenclature and the drive can be flashed with Plex's current firmware. Also worth noting is that certain 4x DVD media is successfully achieving 8x burn if Plex's PoweRec is disabled and spec'd for 8x. (PoweRec reads the DVD/CD media, quality of burn and adjusts the write speed accordingly for reliable writes - turning it off forces a static burn speed per spec chosen).

Haven't heard of any 708UF rebadges though. And, like I said, I like keeping warranties intact. But $130.00 for a 8x DVD +/- RW... it's tempting.

[evilenglishman]

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[CyberDyneSystems]

evilenglishman wrote:
Sketcher wrote:
evilenglishman wrote:
Plextor drives are actually considered a cheapo brand when comapred to Pioneer, Panasonic or Sony :)
Your Nick is appropriate here evilenglishman, you're evil. Unless your name is Evilen Glishman ;).





Why does expressing my opinion mean I'm evil?????
At the end of the day all I am saying is you spent too much money on an overpriced CD Drive.

you asked for opinions, but if they differ from yours you're not happy?!?!?!

I hardly want to get into an argument with this odd subject. Of course personally I enjoy and listen to all opinions.. but EvilEnglishman,. you are simply wrong here about Plextor's reputation among those who build PCs.

Since they were introduced,. Plextor optical drives have been rated the highest in reliability and have been the mainstay of computer techy recomendations. They have allwas been priced nearly double (or more) than other optical drives. (actually the price difference is less now than it used to be) In this day and age where an optical drives averadge lifespan tends to be (unfortunately) about a year.. sometimes it is sensible to pay the extra for a drive that will last.

As someone who has built and sold and or installed in offices dozens of PCs I can tell you the 2nd most likely part to fail in under a year is the optical drive. Also there is a direct correlation between speed and failure.. the faster the CD-R drive ,. the sooner it will fail. Thus in office PCs for years I used "slower" rated drives (24X as opposed to the 52X) in an effort to have the drives last longer than a few months.

Of the PCs in which I have installed Plextor drives.. whether they be CD-ROM, CD-RW, SCSI, or IDE/Atapi,.. dating back to machine that have been running non stop since 1996-1997,.. I have yet to replace one.

No other drive can match that track record. I recently installed a TDK CD-RW in a clients PC at there request (actually TDK is a brand I DO recomend...) a 52X recordable drive... it lasted less than 5 weeks!

[Sketcher]

evilenglishman wrote:
Why does expressing my opinion mean I'm evil?????
At the end of the day all I am saying is you spent too much money on an overpriced CD Drive.

you asked for opinions, but if they differ from yours you're not happy?!?!?!
Hey now, back the truck up. Just some kidding going on there :O. I have absolutely no problem with opinions. But you say "Plextor drives are actually considered a cheapo brand when compared to Pioneer, Panasonic or Sony" with the only reasoning for your saying so being a smiley. I mistakenly took that for a point of humor and ran with it; the while making a play on your Nickname. No harm intended and I apologize for perceived foul.

Per your interests and perhaps many others here, that drive is not worth the $$$. Per the interests I've stated however, whether this particular drive is the cat's meow; it's worth it to me to spend that kind of money to get in that ballpark performance and reliability wise.

I'll knock around your "opinion" however in light of the fact that you don't caveat your statement. In what respect is Plextor considered "a cheapo brand" compared to Pioneer, Panasonic or Sony? What, if anything is being compared? I'm not saying there is no aspect of that statement which could not be correct. I simply draw on my experience as a Sys Administrator, Tech Junkie, obsessed PC Hardware fan and Electronics tinkerer that though there are stellar non-Plex products worth recognition; Plextor is the hardware/software performance standard which every manufacturer strives to compete with. As a brand, they're the 500lb Gorilla with the ability to back up their specs product after product, technology advance after another.

Personal experience is that I've owned numerous CD-R & RW's over the years both corporate and in my soho. We've run the gamut of Pioneer, Panasonic, Sony, Philips, TDK, Lite-On, OEM rebrand and others. Any time a OEM or other drive fails or shows inconsistency we replace it with a Plextor not because the name is fancy or that it just plain costs more, but because the reliability and performance of the gear saves us money as a corporation.

So, my intention in referring to you as 'evil' was only a play on your own nickname, in relation to your comment which in light of significant technical experience leads me to believe that you must have been saying that in jest (smiley notwithstanding). My apologies for my misunderstanding you. I meant no offense.

The stage is now yours. Please feel free to explain your reasoning.

Best Regards,

Sketcher

[MarkH]

evilenglishman wrote:
Plextor drives are actually considered a cheapo brand when comapred to Pioneer, Panasonic or Sony :)

By who?

I have used Plextor, Sony, Pioneer, Ricoh, Diamond Data. I have experience with several other brands.

Plextor is recognised almost universally as a quality brand and all others as cheapo in comparison.

My 12/12/32S has written a LOT of CDs and over many hundred disks has never had a failure that couldn't be attributed to a bad disk (visible scratch) or some other factor (writting from a corrupted image or copying from a scratched disk).

My Ultraplex 40max can extract 74 minutes of audio from a standard CD in about 3.5 minutes with no flaws whatsoever. (How many other CD-ROM drive have hardware jitter correction?)

My Sony writer had a very cheap feel to it, especially when the tray ejected, the Plextor makes it look like a toy in comparison.

[evilenglishman]

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[hawg]

I am sold on Plextor I have their Firewire external drives and CD/RW drives. I have also used other brands and had mixed success. As someone who works on computers for a living, I find that most brands given a certain pricepoint will work/fail similarly. In most cases you get what you pay for.

One factor that someone touched on briefly that is just as critical as your device is the software that you use. I have used several kinds and Nero (IMHO) is the best. So often, users complain that their drives fail but in most cases it is the software that fails.

[Sketcher]

hawg wrote:
So often, users complain that their drives fail but in most cases it is the software that fails.


Good point hawg, I can't count how many times simply updating firmware, software revisions or application settings have made replacing a drive unnecessary. Also important is to ensure Motherboard and drive controller BIOS are current and configured properly when working with problematic drives.

For quite some time, Roxio's Easy CD Creator wouldn't recognize a burner properly in certain distributions of Windows XP depending on which WHLQ drivers were prepackaged in the image. I use NERO myself and I don't recall having had an issue other than having used really cheap media resulting in questionable burns.

A number of times an employee has said "But I just bought it so everything should be current and work". Well, that'd be nice. However, product spends time in transit and sits on the shelf. Product is shipped with whatever software/bios is available at the time and quite often revisions are released after a package hits production and a CD is stamped. Unless there's a significant software glitch, there isn't a company in the world who's going to recall shipped product to replace software just because revisions are made available or a new version of Windows or other require driver updates. In today's consumer economy, product recall can kill a business. Much less expensive and certainly more efficient is what manufacturers to with great success and that is making updates available via their support Website.

And, there certainly are the cases where product just doesn't work. Sometimes there isn't a newer firmware, BIOS or application update to get you going. Depending on the cost of the new product, replacing existing hardware to make it work may or may not be cost effective.

[allmeta4]

regardless of the color of the case, I'm very pleased with my new 708UF. It does write several times faster to DVD+R than -R. It has written to Fuji and TDK DVDs just fine.

I too have had great luck with Plextor over the years.

Regards, Bob

[PacAce]

CyberDyneSystems wrote:
I hardly want to get into an argument with this odd subject. Of course personally I enjoy and listen to all opinions.. but EvilEnglishman,. you are simply wrong here about Plextor's reputation among those who build PCs.

Since they were introduced,. Plextor optical drives have been rated the highest in reliability and have been the mainstay of computer techy recomendations. They have allwas been priced nearly double (or more) than other optical drives. (actually the price difference is less now than it used to be) In this day and age where an optical drives averadge lifespan tends to be (unfortunately) about a year.. sometimes it is sensible to pay the extra for a drive that will last.

As someone who has built and sold and or installed in offices dozens of PCs I can tell you the 2nd most likely part to fail in under a year is the optical drive. Also there is a direct correlation between speed and failure.. the faster the CD-R drive ,. the sooner it will fail. Thus in office PCs for years I used "slower" rated drives (24X as opposed to the 52X) in an effort to have the drives last longer than a few months.

Of the PCs in which I have installed Plextor drives.. whether they be CD-ROM, CD-RW, SCSI, or IDE/Atapi,.. dating back to machine that have been running non stop since 1996-1997,.. I have yet to replace one.

No other drive can match that track record. I recently installed a TDK CD-RW in a clients PC at there request (actually TDK is a brand I DO recomend...) a 52X recordable drive... it lasted less than 5 weeks!


I'm not trying to get into the "who's better" war here but I do want to point out a fact just as a FYI and let that speak for itself. Sony, Pioneer, Phillips and the other brand name companies have been R&Ding and manufacturing DVD burners for a couple of years now. Plextor only started making DVD burners since the end of January 2003. Just an FYI for whatever that's worth. :)

[CyberDyneSystems]

PacAce,. you raise a good point re: DVD,. and perhaps I have not been paying enough attention to what EvilEnglishman said..

Plextor's regal history that we speak of is in optical drives.. but you are correct,. it is only recently that they adopted DVD-writables into there product line....

So the entire basis of Plextor's history,. it's "slate" if you will may be in fact wiped clean be that...

On the other hand,. if you think of a DVD as just another optical drive,. then Plextors history is longer than some of the other companies mentioned.

Lastly,. the amount of time a company is doing something does not allways = quality.

Lite-on for instance,. seemingly came out of nowhere.. and yet there CD-RW drives are highly respected...

[PacAce]

CyberDyneSystems wrote:
PacAce,. you raise a good point re: DVD,. and perhaps I have not been paying enough attention to what EvilEnglishman said..

Plextor's regal history that we speak of is in optical drives.. but you are correct,. it is only recently that they adopted DVD-writables into there product line....

So the entire basis of Plextor's history,. it's "slate" if you will may be in fact wiped clean be that...

On the other hand,. if you think of a DVD as just another optical drive,. then Plextors history is longer than some of the other companies mentioned.

Lastly,. the amount of time a company is doing something does not allways = quality.

Lite-on for instance,. seemingly came out of nowhere.. and yet there CD-RW drives are highly respected...

No arguments there. I agree with you 100%. :)

I think the point is that the comsumer electronics industry has matured to a point where no one particular company can claim superiority of their products over another. I've found that, for example, with the DVD burners, it's not the quality of the component but the compatibility of the component with other products such as the make of PC, the operating system, and the DVD media that is more a factor. I have a friend who has a DVD burner from Brand A and he has yet to successfully burn any Brand B DVD-R media. He bought a whole bunch of these Brnad B DVD-Rs 'cuz they were on sale and was rather upset that he couldn't use them. He made 3 or 4 coasters before deciding to get rid of them and getting Brand A DVD-Rs and DVD+Rs instead. I took two spindles of the Brand B DVD-Rs off his hand and they burned perfectly fine on my Brand C DVD burner. From this experience (and what I read previously) I will never buy a Brand A DVD although I do have (and will continue to buy) other electronics gears made by Brand A. I even told him not to buy Brand A but instead buy Brand C but he wouldn't listen. But now he's the wiser for it. :)

BTW, Brand A, B, and C are all well-known brand name companies. I chose NOT to use the real names lest I start a real brand name war! :D