Josh Saddler

Was just getting ready to play some Rollercoaster Tycoon 2 via Wine when bam -- my DVDRW drive lets go. Well, technically, the disc did; I've been playing it for some time even though it was cracked about 1/4 of the way through. I never expected it to fly apart inside the drive; I just expected it to eventually reach the point where it couldn't be read at all, then I'd go bargain-bin hunting to find a replacement.

My mistake, it seems.

So now I'm out an optical drive. It's probably not safe to use ever again even if I'm sure I got the last of the disc fragments out.

Ah well. I've been wanting to switch to SATA burners anyway. This gives me an excuse to buy two, instead of the single drive I've had.

I don't think I'll buy Samsung again, though. That thing should have a read of 48x, but instead it's closer to 12x. Write speeds are better, though only half to 3/4 of the advertised speed even when using the rated media. Unless this is something Linux-wide, or a K3b issue, I think Samsung's optical drives leave a lot to be desired.

Time to go shopping...I wonder if there are any good quality SATA burners on the market. All I've seen are rather lackluster LG and Samsung models.

Bah. Being driveless sucks. My workstation is out of commission for awhile. No music, no media, no fun.