How Many BURNS can one expect from the DRU500a?

[defense]

I know this may sound like a peculiar question but I had to ask it. I read something about hard drives where a poster asked how long they could expect to get out of a hard drive and I believe BJ_M posted something about hundreds of thousands of hours. That was crazy, and if my Maxtor 40 GB HD can last half that long with all the abuse i've given it, then WOW! lol..

anyway, that prompted me to think of approximately how many burns can one expect to get from their burner. In this case, I am being specific to the SONY DRU500a, because that is the burner I have. I would think that after so many burns the laser would start to deteriorate and burn out. I've read posts where people say they've burned a couple hundred disks and now their burner won't work, but i've read the same about Pioneer after a few days. So those just seem like defects. I know this is kind of like how many licks does it take to get to the tootsie of a tootsie pop..lol..but if anyone has any accurate information on how long this type of burner should last and about how many burns a person can expect to have with it, I think it would be interesting to read and know. Thanks in advance

[LanEvo7]

It depends how frequently you use it and what enviornment you use it in. Chances are by the time it burns out, you'll probably be happy because no you have an excuse to buy a newer faster drive.

[q1aqza]

It depends how frequently you use it and what enviornment you use it in. Chances are by the time it burns out, you'll probably be happy because no you have an excuse to buy a newer faster drive.

I totally agree with that one. I've had my Pioneer 104 for less than a year now and already I would like an excuse to change it for a faster one but I guess it still has lots of use yet

[disturbed1]

Search Sony's support for MTBF. Mean Time Before Failure. It should be listed in your manual also.

Common MTBF's I've seen for DVD-R burners are 100,000 hours, or 100,000 1XDVDs, 200,000 2x, providing you don't use it to rip.

BTW I'm sure you'd rather stess out a $40 DVD-ROM rather than a $300+

[Smile_M]

Search Sony's support for MTBF. Mean Time Before Failure. It should be listed in your manual also.

Common MTBF's I've seen for DVD-R burners are 100,000 hours, or 100,000 1XDVDs, 200,000 2x, providing you don't use it to rip.

BTW I'm sure you'd rather stess out a $40 DVD-ROM rather than a $300+

I agree that one shoud use a dedicated dvd-rom for ripping
But what is better Pioneer 117 or Liteon 163x? I can't decide what to buy myself

And if one uses his dvd writer as a writer only it should last real long at least 3 years. Aso it depends on how many dvd's you burn too.

[defense]

Common MTBF's I've seen for DVD-R burners are 100,000 hours, or 100,000 1XDVDs, 200,000 2x, providing you don't use it to rip.

that's pretty much the stats I was looking for. I have to laugh everytime I hear something like that because where the hell do they come from? That's the same thing I read about hard drives. If I can get a PERCENTAGE of that out of my burner it will be more then worth its weight in gold....lol....hard to believe where the manufacturers come up with those numbers and how they test the burners, cause i'm gonna just go ahead and say they damn sure didn't test 100k burns at 1x, or 200,000 burns at 2x. Thanks for the post though, I was hoping to see someone that knew about that and the whole time before failure thing. Thanks

[schildi]

Interesting question .....
I have found the following spec for the DRU500A:

MTBF: 100,000 POH (25% duty)

I believe that this means 100,000 power-on hours, while actually using it 25% of the time. Now worst case scenario: One leaves the Computer on all the time (24 hours a day), and actually uses the drive for read / write 25% (that would be 6 hours per day!!!). Then the expected life-time would be 4167 days, or 11.4 years. Now, is it really worth it to buy another drive just for reading? Well, I guess one could have bad bad luck, and the drive lasts fewer hours .......

Who knows ...

[disturbed1]

I think sony and pioneer tend to both make equal quality products, that being said,

I pre-ordered my AO3 almost 3 years ago. I burn for an hour, rest .5 hour, burn ..................

It's done this since I bought it, and is doing it now.

The only reason I haven't upgraded is because it still works fine.

I also have a Panasonic LF-D311 which is 8 months newer, used in the same way with out problems for 2 years now.

Neither of these drives have seen anything but blank DVD's.