DVD-RAM any good any more?

[Mac1337]

My Sawtooth came with a DVD-RAM drive. A lot has changed since then so I am wondering if it is useful anymore? Can I burn and play home DVDs on it?

[Chupa Chupa]

DVD-RAM is all but a a dead technology. This discs are around $5 while a DVD-R disc is around .20. And since DVD-RAM discs can only be played in a DVD-RAM drive or player DVD-RAM is not really practical.

If I recall correctly, I do believe the DVD-RAM drive in the Sawtooth could read commercial DVDs. No idea if it can read DVD-/+R since that came after DVD-RAM.

[Mac1337]

Yes, it does play commercial DVDs.

[PeterW]

Apple's DVD-RAM drive is not capable of burning anything but DVD-RAM disks. It's as close to useless as you can find. For $35, replace it with a Pioneer -111 Superdrive. You might be able to find a sucker on the LEM list willing to pay for it.

[Silencio]

The DVD-RAM technology that shipped with Apple's old G4s is pretty much dead. But the single-layer, non-cartridge-based DVD-RAM discs are pretty useful in numerous circumstances and have some significant advantages over DVD+/-RW discs.

But I'd chuck that stock DVD-RAM drive you have and buy something more current. Some of the current cheap DVD burners will write to non-cartridge-based DVD-RAM discs.

[Racer X]

The Panasonic DVD burners are called Rambo drives because they will burn to DVD-RAM disks at 5x.

What killled the old DVD-RAM drives in the Sawtooth and GigE machines was that they were 1x, and in practice, burned at about 300k a second speed.

[timg]

DVD-RAM any good any more?

The answer really depends on what you use it for. If you want to burn movies, then no, it's not any good.

For other things, it can be very good. I use it to archive digital pictures. I can use it like a big floppy disk and just add and delete files as needed. For this use though, your old DVD-RAM drive would be pretty painful to use. I started out using the built-in DVD-RAM from my GigE machine (which I believe is a bit faster than your drive), but moved up to a Pioneer DVR-110 flashed to support DVD-RAM. I kept the old drive in an external case since I have some stuff on the older cartridge type DVD-RAM (the kind you can't take out).
Works well for me.

And by the way, the older LF-D111 drives in the Sawtooth only supported the 2.6GB media (not the 4.7GB media). The drive I got in my machine was an LF-D211, which wrote twice as fast and supported the 4.7GB media.

[john-o]

timg,

Do you have any trouble formatting DVD-RAM discs? I seem to have problems with about 1 in 4. I have a bunch of 'em, from different vendors, because I've always liked their ability to work like a giant floppy. I've just never had much luck with their reliability, especially in terms of formatting…

I never hear the same from others either.

Odd.

[Panopticon]

john-o the 'trick' to formatting DVD-RAM under OS X is to first do a quick erase using DragonBurn or Toast. Eject the disc and launch Disk Utility.app. Insert the disc, select it & then do a Quick Erase (HFS+) under DU. Do Not enable Journaling!
That should do the job.

btw, if you put a DVD-RAM burner in an external FW box, it could hang the system under 10.4.x while copying large (1Mb >) files from an internal HD. It's a system bug that's well discussed over @ Apple Support http://discussions.apple.com/category.js...goryID=160

There are now 12X DVD-RAM burners, but I've yet to see any discs rated over 5X.

[timg]

I have not had any trouble formatting DVD-RAM disks just using Disk Utility. It's still a pain to have to do that though ... never had to under OS 9!