Typical LifeSpan of a Burner

[MarkRacer]

Just curious...How many burns would you say a typical burner produces before it meets its demise? Considering the low prices of burners, I thought about changing optical drives about once per year, maybe even sooner. I typically burn about 20-25 dvd/cd's per weekend. So, I figure I burn maybe 1,200 discs in a year. FYI...I've been using a LiteOn 1693S for the majority of my stuff.

[mats.hogberg]

Hardly Latest News, this - Moving you.

/Mats

[HatchetMan]

Do a NERO CD-DVD SPEED quality scan every once in while to see how the drive is holding up. Keep the firmware up to date. When the scans start to look like crap and you know it is not because of the media (not easy to do), then it may be time for a new burner. Too hard to determine how many burns a drive is good for. For example, the exact same model of drive may be made in both China and Taiwan. Who knows which will last longer?

[SilverBlade]

I've heard up to 1000 burns....

[sho95]

My SONY dru710a is almost at 1500 and still get great burns. Even better than my newer 1693s that has maybe 40 burns on it.

[ROF]

All my burners have pretty much outlasted their useful life to me. I have upgraded several times during DVD/CD Burning lifespans only because newer tech and faster burns were possible with these newer drives. To my knowledge all the burners I've passed on to others are still working too.

[Supreme2k]

getting close to 2000 for my optorite dd1205. Still works/scans great.

out of curiosity, did MarkRacer kill overloaded_ide to hijack his avatar? He hasn't posted in a while.

[BobK]

I had a Liteon 851 that burned about 3000 disks with no problem. I just replaced it with a 1693 when I started getting bad burns- turned out that the problem wasn't the burner so who knows how much longer it would have worked if I still had it.

[OneSickPup]

With one exception (a piece of crap Sony DRU510) I've never had an optical drive fail me (dvdrom or dvdrw). Given the proper environment:

• Good quality PSU
  Good case/enclosure cooling
  Clean smoke-free/dust-free environment

then you would be surprised how long they will last. I have a Pioneer DVR108 with over 1000 and still kicking.

[BobK]

With one exception (a piece of crap Sony DRU510) I've never had an optical drive fail me (dvdrom or dvdrw).

Good ole Sony again. My first burner was a DRU500. Failed after less than 200 disks (took about 6 months). After a phone fight they gave me an RMA for repair. Took 4 weeks to return it and problem not fixed. That's when I got the Liteon.

[dcsos]

My SONYDRU-500 died after about 500 burns.

The PIONEERA03 still burns 16x blanks at 2X
at leat 2000 burns
meanwhile the 2 NEC's I have are at about 500 burns each now

[samijubal]

NEC 3500 has done well over 3000, maybe 4000, it still works fine. Some were ripped on it too, some weren't.