CD drives and writers have become very popular now these days. If we check 5 computer owners we will find atleast 3 of them will have writer.I Have brought three samsung drives in 2005 and all of them is just needed to be put in trash..Samsung drives works perfectly for only a month or two.With the continues use of these drives ( CDROM, combo , CDRW) the tray will get a automative function.U all will be thinking about that new function, that is nothing but automative tray open and close funtion.In all my three samsung drives the same problem have occured. Once it happen then we cannot read or write anything from it.The tray will open while installing a program or some games etc... and make the computer life in deep waters..Sometimes the tray will get stuck inside the drive and we cannot get it out and we have to then find some pin and have to open the tray manually which is not a healthy practice.If u want show others that u have this much drive in ur system then this is the best one and not for reading and writing. If u want to use the drive to read and write then u must think of some other brands like LG, SONY etc.. I have both LG and SONY and it is working perfectly.I have written around 800- 900 copies with my LG writer and the drive has not shown any signs of problem, still it is working as brand New...
Selection of drives mainly depends on ur usage, which type of optical disc ( CD or DVD ) u r using, speed u want etc... Many people go for combo drive just because it can read or write both cds and dvds. most of them may not be needing that much funtions.... I perfer to buy a cd writer and a dvd writer separately rather than going for a combo drive. With long term usage writer head’s Life will decrease and we cannot say how much it will long. Using writers for reading datas is also not a healthy practice. I recommend all to use the dvd writer to write dvd’s only and use a cd writer for writing normal cds and for reading use only the cdrom . The main advantage of this that it will increase the life of the drives and long term use will be sure on hand.