# Benefits of having multiple optical drives?



## Kantastic (Jun 27, 2010)

Hey guys, I'm doing a rough sketch of a potential summer project, building my own tech station, and was wondering if there were any benefits of having more than one optical drive?


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## pr0n Inspector (Jun 27, 2010)

Straight disc to disc copy and write/read two discs at the same time. Can't think of anything else.
truth be told I haven't opened my DVD drive in weeks.


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## slyfox2151 (Jun 27, 2010)

ripping those "borrowed" DVDs from your friends/store rented faster 

you could blast through a stack of 4 at a time


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## FordGT90Concept (Jun 27, 2010)

When a disk explodes in one drive, you still got another drive to use.  Also, for example, you could have two disks in the computer at a time so you could switch between two games without changing disks.

I used to do/recommend, one DVD-ROM and one DVD-RW per computer.  Since, I've discovered DVD-ROM drives are crap and I rarely use disks so my most recent builds had only one (Lite-On) DVD-RW drive.


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## Frick (Jun 27, 2010)

FordGT90Concept said:


> Since, I've discovered DVD-ROM drives are crap and I rarely use disks so my most recent builds had only one (Lite-On) DVD-RW drive.



Why are they crap? Most of my old DVD drives have been much better at reading than the brand new DVD-RW's I've had.


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## slyfox2151 (Jun 27, 2010)

DVD Rom drives dont seem to be able to read as well as DVD RW drives. 


thats why.


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## Frick (Jun 27, 2010)

slyfox2151 said:


> DVD Rom drives dont seem to be able to read as well as DVD RW drives.
> 
> 
> thats why.



That's wierd, for me it's been the other way round. Stroke of luck maybe.


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## 1Kurgan1 (Jun 27, 2010)

My experience is, those drives are all cheap, and they seem to be random on life expectancy.


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## rizla1 (Jun 27, 2010)

my dvd -rw has been unpluged since my last clean up about 3 months ago. lol

its never used anyway...


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## BazookaJoe (Jun 27, 2010)

Installing a LEGAL copy of Diablo2 - having 4 X Optic drives will make your life a breeze


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## roast (Jun 27, 2010)

2 years ago, I would swear by having two DVDRW drives, purely for disc-to-disc recording on the fly. Very handy feature to have ; and as cheap as ~40 bucks for the two drives.
However, I haven't used my DVD drive in _at least_ 6 months. Not even for OS installations.

However, if you have the money, how about a BD + BDRW combo?  Might be interesting to have.

Offtopic a little.... @rizla1, where on the emerald isle do you hail from?


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## AsRock (Jun 27, 2010)

Kantastic said:


> Hey guys, I'm doing a rough sketch of a potential summer project, building my own tech station, and was wondering if there were any benefits of having more than one optical drive?



Some games like D2 used all optical drives and was ideal with the install as the annoying disk swapping.  I found some games checked for more CD\DVD players were some don't.

A shop i used to go to used to use multiple CD players ( yeah that long ago ) so they could copy their required info faster from HDD.


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## Mussels (Jun 27, 2010)

i find a BD + DVD-RW combo works well. put the DVD's and CD's into the DVD-RW, so you dont get wear and tear on the more expensive drive.


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## Disparia (Jun 27, 2010)

Back in the P2/P3 days: Had a DVD-ROM with decoder card and a CD-RW. Could play DVD's (and all other MPEG content) on my TV while playing a disc-based game.

Couple years ago: Had 3 DVD-RW for burning multiple copies at once. Not much need for that now and I just have one installed.

Future: None of my systems will have one. Just a single Blu-Ray in the home server for ripping and sharing over the network and the occasional burn.



BazookaJoe said:


> Installing a LEGAL copy of Diablo2 - having 4 X Optic drives will make your life a breeze



I know how long that can take! But if you register your keys with Blizzard you can download a pre-patched D2 and LOD installer package.


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## _33 (Jun 27, 2010)

Doom 3 can install using all optical drives available so U don't wait and swap discs.


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## hat (Jun 27, 2010)

I have a DVD-RW and a DVD-ROM. Most things go in the DVD-ROM... I only use the DVD-RW to burn.


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## NdMk2o1o (Jun 27, 2010)

dvd drives are becoming like floppy drives, I barely use mine at all, though cant see optical drives being replaced anytime soon because of the advent of BR and the fact that other storage mediums like flash drives are expensive in comparison.


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