Fast CD Drive for LiveCDs

[chessnerd]

As the date of my desktop build grows closer, I am looking into CD/DVD drives (don't think I'll get a Blu-Ray drive for a couple of years, too expensive for now) and I'm thinking about getting a really fast CD drive. I like to test distros on LiveCDs and with a faster drive that would be a much more enjoyable experience. Also, installing would be much quicker.

I figured "It's 2010, so there must be some wicked fast CD-ROM drives out there nowadays." I mean, used to hear about 72x CD-ROM drives (found some articles from early 2000s about some) and I know I've seen at least 52x CD-ROM speeds on drives before, but the fastest drive on Newegg is only 48x. I found a 56x from BenQ on Amazon, but that's the best I can find so far.

I have a few questions:

First, would a faster read speed actually matter when it comes to using LiveCDs, installing an OS, or installing software from a CD?

Second, does anyone know where I could find a drive with a really high CD read speed? My Google-Fu isn't powerful enough to find one.

Third, since my search may be in vein, what brand, model, specs, etc. would you guys recommend for CD/DVD drives in general? (Not just ultra-fast drives)

[cenzorrll]

unfortunately anything above 40x in a cd drive is pretty much useless. at those speeds the cd will actually start to warp, making it unable to be read by the laser (mythbusters did a really cool experiment with this, albeit a bit overpowered)

i've recently discovered the awesomeness of using usb flash drives instead. they can be read much faster and you can reuse them over and over again.

i haven't done any scientific research on this but i do believe that cd/dvd combo drives will die faster than a cd or dvd drive (i've gone through two drives in the past three years, although i did opt for low/mid price bracket ones)

[V for Vincent]

Actually, I don't think a fast drive will really help you all that much. I mean, if it could be fast in every single way, yeah, but it's still got a fair share of mechanical components. Plus drives don't often operate at their nominal speed. If you open up a program on a live cd, it has to find the right sector and everything, which will always take a while.

You could try installing live cd's on a usb stick, though. Those things are pretty snappy. Ubuntu includes a little utility for that by default.

[cascade9]

First, would a faster read speed actually matter when it comes to using LiveCDs, installing an OS, or installing software from a CD?

Second, does anyone know where I could find a drive with a really high CD read speed? My Google-Fu isn't powerful enough to find one.

Third, since my search may be in vein, what brand, model, specs, etc. would you guys recommend for CD/DVD drives in general? (Not just ultra-fast drives)

1- wont make much difference, if any at all. IIRC, however, DVD does read faster than CD so if you want to get more speed from a liveCD, burn it to DVD ;)

2- All the 'high speed' rated CD drive I've tested ended up being slower than lower rated drives from better brands (eg. the 'yum-cha' 52x speed drive I tested was slower to read than a 40x Sony CD drive, or a 48x LiteOn). There was a kenwood 72x drive around but I wouldnt bother...they were at amazon but appear to be gone now-

http://www.amazon.com/Kenwood-Reader-Atapi-Truex-CDRom/dp/B00004Z8DQ

3- I try to get pioneer or sony myself. I've found them to be better quality than the cheaper brands (benq and samsung in particular)


unfortunately anything above 40x in a cd drive is pretty much useless. at those speeds the cd will actually start to warp, making it unable to be read by the laser (mythbusters did a really cool experiment with this, albeit a bit overpowered)

i've recently discovered the awesomeness of using usb flash drives instead. they can be read much faster and you can reuse them over and over again.

i haven't done any scientific research on this but i do believe that cd/dvd combo drives will die faster than a cd or dvd drive (i've gone through two drives in the past three years, although i did opt for low/mid price bracket ones)

Agreed on 40x+ being useless.

If you think that USB flash drives are fast....get an ESATA flash drive. :)

Umm....all the DVD drives I've ever seen are 'combo' drives.

[chessnerd]

unfortunately anything above 40x in a cd drive is pretty much useless. at those speeds the cd will actually start to warp, making it unable to be read by the laser (mythbusters did a really cool experiment with this, albeit a bit overpowered)

i've recently discovered the awesomeness of using usb flash drives instead. they can be read much faster and you can reuse them over and over again.

Actually, I don't think a fast drive will really help you all that much. I mean, if it could be fast in every single way, yeah, but it's still got a fair share of mechanical components. Plus drives don't often operate at their nominal speed. If you open up a program on a live cd, it has to find the right sector and everything, which will always take a while.

You could try installing live cd's on a usb stick, though. Those things are pretty snappy. Ubuntu includes a little utility for that by default.

I guess I could give a LiveUSB a try, but I have two concerns:

1. I've heard repeated read/writes to USB flash drives can severely shorten their life span and an operating system can sometimes read and write a lot. Not to mention the fact that if I want to test multiple distros I could be completely re-writing the thing several times in one day.
2. Not every computer can boot from a USB device. For example, I don't think my desktop can. If I wanted to run and/or install the distro on my desktop, or demonstrate it to someone with an older computer, is there a way I can get the computer to recognize the drive or would I need to then also burn a CD?

[k64]

I guess I could give a LiveUSB a try, but I have two concerns:

1. I've heard repeated read/writes to USB flash drives can severely shorten their life span and an operating system can sometimes read and write a lot. Not to mention the fact that if I want to test multiple distros I could be completely re-writing the thing several times in one day.
2. Not every computer can boot from a USB device. For example, I don't think my desktop can. If I wanted to run and/or install the distro on my desktop, or demonstrate it to someone with an older computer, is there a way I can get the computer to recognize the drive or would I need to then also burn a CD?

Actually, Flash memory has one advantage over hard drives that keeps it from failing: no moving parts. USB external hard drives may fail faster than internal ones, but USB flash drives (which are comparable to SSDs) typically last longer than hard drives.

[Paqman]

1. I've heard repeated read/writes to USB flash drives can severely shorten their life span and an operating system can sometimes read and write a lot.

Technically it will, but it's not something i'd worry about. If you were running your main OS all day every day off a USB stick then it's probably a problem you'd bump into eventually. But a 2GB USB stick can be had for the price of a couple of pints these days anyway.

If your system will boot from USB then it's much more convenient and quicker than using CDs.

[3rdalbum]

CD media has a physical limit to the speed it can be spun at without shattering. Even 20x drives used to be able to shatter some discs, so it's no surprise that they've stopped at about 48x.

In reality I don't think they read at (48 x audio CD data rate).

[cartman640]

As has already been stated, the difference between 40x and 72x in the real world isn't noticeable, seek times are the real killer. For any real speed, USB pen drives are the way to go, yes they do have a finite number of writes (it's many thousand, I still have a 128mb pen drive from the birth of USB2 that still goes) but even if you somehow reach that limit, they normally cost less than an average lunch to replace.

Same with optical drives really, sure the Sony or Pioneer drives are better quality, but at the end of the day it's not going to matter, I picked up the cheapest drive I could find a few years ago, happens to be a LiteOn, and it's still going strong, hasn't had an error yet. If it does, once again, like a pen drive it's cheap to replace and I've got more than my monies worth out of it.

[JohnFH]

Why do you want to test different distros? If your answer is more to do with hardware compatibility then you can probably safely ignore the rest of this post and stick to USB installs. However if you mainly want to explore different distros than you've been using then consider using VirtualBox (or WMware) to test the installations. It's so much faster to install and you can do stuff on your host PC while your guest PC goes through the installation. You can even have a couple of installations running at once depending on the speed of your host.

[mamamia88]

i second the usb idea. much faster than cd and makes experience more emjoybable

[forrestcupp]

If you must do Live CDs, you should get the fastest you can. But just know that even with the fastest drives available, it will still be slow as molasses. ;)

[cascade9]

Same with optical drives really, sure the Sony or Pioneer drives are better quality, but at the end of the day it's not going to matter, I picked up the cheapest drive I could find a few years ago, happens to be a LiteOn, and it's still going strong, hasn't had an error yet. If it does, once again, like a pen drive it's cheap to replace and I've got more than my monies worth out of it.

I wound never say 'it doesnt matter'. I've had CDs and DVDs that would flat-out refuse to read on some cheap drives, that worked fine on pioneer/sony. Similar story on ripping, I've had more than 1 scratched CD that would never rip without errors on other brands, but would run through with no errors on sony/pioneer.

Also, there is virtually no difference in cost between the brands these days (depending on where you go). Where I buy stuf from, all the DVD burners are about $36-38 (.au). Same with newegg in the US.

BTW, last I checked there was only 4-5 factories that even make DVD drives. A lot of them are rebranded (eg my current asus SATA DVD drive is just a rebadged poineer).