Optical drive recommendation

[Second Round]

Hi,

It appears my desktop tower's (5.25"?) optical drive is failing, or has failed. After only 13+ years! Actually it gets pretty infrequent use, but one of those uses right now is re-ripping my CD library to a higher bitrate and hope that my car stereo's USB flash input can read it (separate thread - it started to balk lately at older rips).

There's a Best Buy near me that has a few choices, but my first impulse is to head to Micro Center for this sort of thing. Any brands or designs to avoid, or to seek? While the CD/DVD drive that failed is internal, I could see replacing it with an external one, as I don't otherwise have a way to read (or write) to optical media on my Raspberry Pi computers. (I'm aware a powered USB hub may be required for that use, and I have one). Given the age of my tower PC (it dates to Oct 2010) it seems questionable to add components that may not transfer to its eventual replacement. It's not expensive, but an external optical drive seems like it would have greater potential use.

Thanks!

[ThaCrip]

Actually it gets pretty infrequent use, but one of those uses right now is re-ripping my CD library to a higher bitrate and hope that my car stereo's USB flash input can read it (separate thread - it started to balk lately at older rips).

I suggest keeping a copy of any music you care about in lossless format like FLAC as FLAC is identical to original CD quality source but at roughly half of the file size and can be used to make lossy files like MP3 etc from. keeping FLAC around always gives you a high quality source file to make lossy files from.

Any brands or designs to avoid, or to seek? While the CD/DVD drive that failed is internal, I could see replacing it with an external one, as I don't otherwise have a way to read (or write) to optical media on my Raspberry Pi computers. (I'm aware a powered USB hub may be required for that use, and I have one). Given the age of my tower PC (it dates to Oct 2010) it seems questionable to add components that may not transfer to its eventual replacement. It's not expensive, but an external optical drive seems like it would have greater potential use.

Generally speaking desktop burners are better than laptop ones as you will generally have less issues burning etc. but if you are just trying to read the discs, I saw your other post saying you got a laptop drive which I suspect is good enough to read a CD for now.

but with that said... based on the CD/DVD burners I have, which range from the year 2000 through I think 2011 (basically five optical drives in total (3 IDE, 2 SATA)), some are better at reading pressed CD's (i.e. actual store bought CD's (not CD-R's as CD-R's generally won't have a issue in my experience)) than others are.

but like I say if you have original CD's, I recommend ripping them to FLAC format for future use. this way even if your CD reader dies it's like you still have the CD on your computer, but like mentioned above, it's roughly half of the file size of WAV's, but no loss in audio quality since it's a lossless format.

but with internal vs external... while it's probably more convenient to get a USB powered one, it will be more of laptop quality which are generally worse than desktop ones. but I do have a device which is primary for converting HDD of IDE/SATA connection to a USB 3 connection and even that works on a handful of burners I tested it on (I think two IDE and one SATA). not the most convenient setup though, but it worked. but I suspect getting a proper desktop burner is your best bet. even if you want a desktop burner but external through say USB connection and requires additional power to work, these would probably be okay.

3 out of 5 of the burners I have are Lite-on brand... Lite-on 24102b (IDE) CD-RW burner (which while not my first CD burner, it's the first quality one I got), Liteon 1673s DVD burner (IDE) (which is my first DVD burner), Lite-on iHAS-324B (SATA) which is the newest burner I have from 2011 which is flashed with custom firmware as I primarily got this at the time for burning XBox360 backups as it can overburn DVD+R DL discs a bit. but I use that drive for general data backup nowadays. the other two non-Liteon burners... a old HP CD burner (IDE) from the year 2000 and a Sony Optiarc 7240s (SATA) from 2009. in terms of my two newest burners with reading pressed CD's (i.e. store bought music CD's)... the 7240s drive I think reads those better than the iHAS-324B as I think the iHAS-324B occasionally has trouble acknowledging discs are in the drive (but works fine on burned CD/DVD's).

[Second Round]

Thank you for that detailed reply!

I rarely burn CDs or DVDs any longer. Across multiple types and generations of OS and optical drives, I always found it to be a crapshoot in terms of the results - either success or yet another beverage coaster. Re-writable ones were even more of a longshot for a successful result. Right now I'm just reading pre-recorded CDs (i.e., music albums bought in a store/online) for purposes of ripping them to a digital music library, and eventual transfer to flash drive to play through car stereo. I think my two earliest CDs are now going on 38 years old.

So ... I hope externals do about as well with reading as internals. I guess I'm not surprised they may be inferior for burning. But that'll be a rare occurrence, if ever done anymore. I just have this old tower PC and am a bit wary of putting more non-transferrable (or not-likely-to-get-transferred) components into it. Oh, and btw, I didn't think of this until you mentioned it but I do have a SATA to USB docking station ... I didn't realize it might work with optical drives as well as HDDs. That is interesting! Now ... for ~$60, I could just buy both internal and external ... ha ha.

Thanks for the tip on FLAC. I wish I had known some time ago before I started re-ripping my library! Well, I'm not done, so maybe I'll start doing it that way and revisit the earlier efforts. Still - we're talking 250 CDs. I wonder how much wear and tear a 10 yr old laptop-quality optical drive can handle, even if it is only read mode? Last CD I did, that disc was spinning notably louder than the previous one. So maybe it's on its last legs too! Yikes.

I'd link to this but it's probably a copyright problem, but the other day I was amused by something I saw on imgur ... a cartoon of a couple guys looking at a traditional home component stereo setup, complete with tube amp and vinyl record shelving. The one guy says to the other, "The two things that really drew me to vinyl were the expense and the inconvenience."

[ThaCrip]

I rarely burn CDs or DVDs any longer. Across multiple types and generations of OS and optical drives, I always found it to be a crapshoot in terms of the results - either success or yet another beverage coaster. Re-writable ones were even more of a longshot for a successful result.

I generally stick with quality optical media (Verbatim(Mitsubishi Chemicals ones not the cheaper ones)/Taiyo Yuden) as I got ones from around 15 years old that still scan well with KProbe as if they are still pretty much like when I burned them now, they will likely last for the foreseeable future. I am betting decades from now. NOTE: with ImgBurn one can overburn CD-R's by at least 30sec to 1min or so. on the CD-R's I bought roughly a couple of years ago I can hit at least 82min15sec when normally the official max is 80min. it plays back fine in my CD player from 1991 and 2003.

but with that said... depending on ones burner/optical media combo, it could potentially be a bit flaky, but generally should be reliable enough when you got a decent burner paired with decent media.

p.s. KProbe is older software (which works on Linux through Wine etc) that scans the disc to give you a ball park indication of burn quality. I know roughly the point that reaches before actual read failure will occur on my burner and generally speaking my burned discs (DVD-R/+R) are well within good burn quality.

Right now I'm just reading pre-recorded CDs (i.e., music albums bought in a store/online) for purposes of ripping them to a digital music library, and eventual transfer to flash drive to play through car stereo. I think my two earliest CDs are now going on 38 years old.

Damn, that's getting up there in age ; my oldest ones that I bought back at the time would be pretty much 1992-1993+. the last time I bought a regular audio CD was the early 2000's. but nowadays I just get everything I care about in FLAC format "online" and then keep it so I always have a high quality source file I can depend on to make MP3's etc from.

p.s. https://www.statista.com/chart/12950/cd ... in-the-us/ (shows CD sales in USA from 1985 through 2021) ; as you can see here CD sales, at least in the USA, peaked in the year 2000 with not too far from 1 billion sales in that year. but using roughly 500mil or more CD sales in a year standard that was pretty much 1993 through 2007 time frame. CD sales in recent memory are back around 1985 levels. but it's not surprising as you can tell the general public's use of optical media in general has taken a solid hit vs say 10-15 years ago etc.

Oh, and btw, I didn't think of this until you mentioned it but I do have a SATA to USB docking station ... I didn't realize it might work with optical drives as well as HDDs. That is interesting! Now ... for ~$60, I could just buy both internal and external ... ha ha.

I have one that sits on the desk that takes 2.5"/3.5" SATA hard drives and converts to USB 3 connection, but there is no way I could connect a optical drive to it.

but the specific device I used to connect some standard desktop optical drives to of IDE/SATA connection is... 'Vantec IDE/SATA to USB 3.0 Adapter (Model: CB-ISA225-U3)'. but that's probably a bit older at this point, but I imagine there is similar devices to that online.

Thanks for the tip on FLAC. I wish I had known some time ago before I started re-ripping my library! Well, I'm not done, so maybe I'll start doing it that way and revisit the earlier efforts. Still - we're talking 250 CDs. I wonder how much wear and tear a 10 yr old laptop-quality optical drive can handle, even if it is only read mode? Last CD I did, that disc was spinning notably louder than the previous one. So maybe it's on its last legs too! Yikes.

FLAC has been around a long time as it's probably the closest to a standard of the lossless formats right now. one can use different compression levels from 0-8 (5 seems to be the default in Foobar2000) where the higher the number the smaller the file size but requires a bit more CPU processing power to decode where as the smaller the number the less compression (so larger file size) and the less CPU power it requires to decode. but on pretty much any computer someone is still using, it won't really matter as it's a small enough difference to where it won't matter much. but with that said I generally use the max compression of '8' to save a little more hard drive space. but the defaults are fine for most people as you can't really make a bad choice here as sound quality is exactly the same no matter which compression level you use since it's a lossless format unlike MP3 etc where when you lower the bit rate on that, after a certain point, sound quality will start to take a more obvious hit.

I would say, as a ball park figure, on a typical full length album the file size in FLAC format will probably be in the ball park of 300-500MB per album. so using that as a rough guideline in relation to your 250 CD's, that would be roughly 75-125GB of storage space to put your entire CD collection on your computers hard drive in FLAC format. some types of music compress better than others. like for example Classical music tends to compress quite well (i.e. much smaller file size, say roughly 1/3rd of the original size or shrunk by about 66%) vs say Rock music might only shave off roughly 1/3rd of the file size (so still about 66% of the original WAV file size) etc. but claiming about half the original CD/WAV file size across a wide range of music is a good ball park figure.

depending on how picky you are with ripping audio CD's you could use EAC (Exact Audio Copy) to rip them. but personally, if your CD's are in good condition and not scratched, it's going to be much faster to just copy them from the disc through the file manager to ones hard drive, which will give you the WAV files, and then drag-and-drop into Foobar2000 (Windows software but works on Linux Mint through Wine) and then select the entire album and right click and select 'Tagging > get tags from freedb' as this will add the proper tag data to the CD's on the FLAC files. you can add pictures etc etc, but I generally don't bother as I would rather keep file size to a minimum.

but once you have the FLAC files ready-to-use... at that point converting a single album to MP3 format takes maybe 1 minute or so tops. I would say it takes more time semi-organizing what folders and albums go where than the actual conversion process. there might be a way to somewhat automate this stuff but I have not looked into it for a while since if you could automate it, it would shave a lot of time when you had to convert from FLAC to MP3 since if it automatically creates the folders to organize albums for you a bit better it will be much faster than manually setting up a folder for each album you convert etc. but basically with 250 CD's, it's pretty much going to be time consuming to where you will probably have to do a little here and there to eventually finish it.

but when it comes to making MP3's with Foobar2000 from FLAC files... a good balance of file size/sound quality I suggest using LAME at V5 (130kbps average). I would suggest starting there.

p.s. with Foobar2000 (with the 'Sox Resampler' plugin for Foobar2000) it's even possible to convert those "HD" audio files that are say 24/96 back to standard 16/44.1 that regular audio CD's use which I always do since the "HD" ones are quite a bit larger file size with no real world difference in sound quality simply because standard audio CD's already exceed human hearing ability so you can't really improve on it to any degree a person could actually notice.

[diabolicbg]

Try cleaning the laser lens in the old CD-rom first. For example, use an ear cleaner stick in pure alcohol. Often the problem is dust deposition. The reading lens is visible when opening the drawer.