Best IDE DVD Burners

LG was one of the first companies to introduce a 22x DVD burner to the market. Their GH22LP20 is a solid drive that gives good all around performance no matter what you intend to use the drive for. Whether it is simply playing back CDs or DVDs, burning standard read once discs, rewritables or even dual layer. The drive also features burning labels directory to LightScribe compatible media. The drive is typically sold as an OEM unit without any cables or software and can be found for around $25.

Most DVD burners these days are sold as bare drive or OEM units. If you are looking to install a drive into your desktop and more than just a drive, then a retail kit is what you will want to buy. The HP DVD 1140i retail package includes a copy of Nero Essentials and mounting screws. To keep costs down, the company has removed the IDE cable from the package. Performance is solid for most recording tasks (22x for DVD+/-R and 48x CD-R) but it tends to be slower than many of the current drives for burning double layered media. The drive does support burning labels directly to LightScribe compatible media.

LightScribe is the more popular of the two available systems for burning labels directly to compatible DVD and CD discs using the laser within the burner itself. After creating the data portion of the disc, simply flip the disc over and use a program to burn a graphic directly to the label. With the incredible performance of the LG GH22LP20 for just about every media type and its fairly low price tag, this drive is pretty much the drive to get if you are considering the ability to burn labels to your discs. Be warned that the drive itself doesn't come with the software for burning labels.

Double layered DVD media is an important step for those looking to generate video or data DVDs that extended data. This is critical for many people looking to put more than roughly an hour and a half of video onto a single disc. The LG GH22NP20 is essentially a drive similar to the GH22LP20 without the LightScribe media support. So, why this drive for recording to DVD+R DL or DVD-R DL media? The performance is ever so slightly faster without the LightScribe firmware. Of course, recording at the 16x DVD+R DL or 12x DVD-R DL speeds will require finding compatible blank media which is relatively difficult.

Many people don't consider how permanent data is that is recorded to CDs or DVDs. Since the media is so inexpensive, many people use it as a disposable data source. All those discs that get thrown away can be found and read by other individuals. Lite-ON's iHAP322 drive offers a unique feature they call Smart Erase. By using this, you can render even a single use CD or DVD recorded disc to be unreadable. Note that this feature does't work on commercially printed media. Performance is strong with the 22x DVD+/-R and 48x CD-R recording speeds. It is a bit slower on the dual layered DVD media than some of the highest performing drives. It does support burning labels directly to LightScribe compatible media.