Futurelooks does an exclusive preview of the Samsung MR-A02B DVD-RAM / DVD-R Writer

http://www.futurelooks.com/db_data/db_images/id117_images/product_shot.jpg

"With prices constantly dropping, the DVD-Writer market is finally starting to take off. The Samsung MR-A02B offers both DVD-RAM and DVD-R support, and Futurelooks got an exclusive first look at this exciting new product."

Direct Link:
http://www.futurelooks.com/display.php?i=117&p=1

I received a rather informative e-mail a few days ago regarding DVD-RAM performance, as well as the reasons why a reader believes DVD-RAM / DVD-R should be the standard of choice when it comes to DVD recording.

i read your article "Evaluating DVD-RAM & DVD-R featuring the Samsung
MR-A02B DVD-RAM / DVD-R Writer."
http://www.futurelooks.com/display.asp?i=117&p=1

We have the Panasonic LF-D201 DVD-RAM SCSI Drive. The slow speed you
experienced writing dvd-ram surprised me. Using win2000 server's system
backup, i can back up about 300MB in less than a minute and then verify it
in less than a minute (as fast as backing up to the harddrive).
Extrapolating, it would take only about 15 minutes to backup 4.7GB to FAT32,
not the two hours mentioned in your article. Since it is a terminal server,
i could have you do it yourself over the internet using rdp if you want to
check it for yourself.

What we mostly use our dvd-ram for doing daily backups of documents, tif
files, and a database program comprising about 2GB. We have regulary used
it to backup these small data files using xcopy.exe /d for about 2 years
each business day. It is hard to say how many megabytes are actually being
moved around per day offhand, but it is about as fast as our harddrives!
I log all these times showing that the speed of the writing/rewriting to the
dvd-ram is about as fast as writing to a another scsi harddrive over a
100Mbps LAN. I would be happy to share the log if interested.

What worries me about dvd+rw is that it is from the same people who brought
us misburns, cd coasters, and incompatible cd drives. I have never had a
misburn with our 5 dvd-ram cartridges even though we punished one each
business day for the last two years. What worries me more is that microsoft
does not even recognize it as an alternative in the following article: "DVD
Writing Support and Windows" http://www.microsoft.com/hwdev/tech/stream/DVD/DVDRW_support.asp
I am happy that mt-rainier.org will finally be prevalent someday for CD
burning, however it has taken years. The dvdforum.com delivered the
replacement floppy years ago with dvd-ram.

Why is it that dvd-ram does not get the recognition it deserves? The DVDBurner dvd-ram dvd-r combo solves the compatibility problem with dvd
players because it burns dvd-r as well. The DVDBurner II dvd-ram will read
and write cdrw as well.

A few points regarding this e-mail:

1) The difference between SCSI and IDE interfaces between the Samsung & Panasonic drives shouldn't have been the cause of the slower transfer speeds witnessed with the Samsung drive.

2) From what I've seen, DVD+RW is almost like the VHS of DVD-Recording standards -- not necessarily the best format, but the one that will probably win due to the number of companies behind it (DVD-RAM will probably remain though, much like Betamax does for a niche market). Considering even Microsoft is promoting DVD+RW, it's a little difficult to downplay this standard.

Feel free to post any questions/comments you may have.