Jim, your Liteon 40125S may be inexpensive, but it's a highly rated CD writer.  I use one myself, as well as a previous model Liteon - the 24102b, also highly rated.

Firstly, I'd suggest you don't use CDRW (rewriteable) disks.  They're expensive, slow and often produce variable results.  Also, a disk written in your machine may not be readable on another machine.  A better bet is to use reliable and inexpensive CDR media.  I don't know what's available in your part of the globe, but here in New Zealand I've found Benq 48x's to be excellent for all-round use.

Secondly, the disk writing speed isn't as important as accuracy.  So, unless you're doing commercial duplication, in which case you need vastly different equipment, reduce the speed to less than the disk's rated maximum. 

A good rule of thumb is to burn at about half or three-quarters of the rated speed of the disk.  I do all of my CD writing at 24x or 32x speed on the 48x Benq's. 

Another practice I avoid is to use the 'drag and drop' facility available with a lot of software.  All of the major CD burning apps seem to have a facility which enables you to 'format' a CD for ongoing use and copy to it by dragging the data onto the disk icon.

Well, maybe it works for some of you folks, bit I've tried it several times and it's never worked for me.  Even when the copy seemed to 'take' it wasn't readable on machines lacking the same software.

It might be a little slower but regular copying methods at reduced speeds will produce far less duds.  And you can always use the forced delay to go outside and smell the roses :--))

Footnote: CD burning software is way better than it was even 6 months ago.  Nero's latest version, 6, is excellent, probably the best, I'd say.  It's 'Nero Express' sub-app is particularly helpful and intuitive for non-experts.  The latest version of NTI CDMaker Pro is also extremely good, but I think Nero has the edge.
  
Ian Porter
Computer Guys Inc.
Arrowtown
New Zealand
[log in to unmask]

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Jim 

  Subject: [PCBUILD] Cd-RW Speed


  Hi
  I have a Liteon CD-ReWritter, model LTR 40125S, rated 40x12x48x. I'm confused as to what the speed of CD-RW   to use. I am now using 4x Multi Speed as a floppy disc. This disc seems very slow. 
  I've seen discs rated at 12x and at 24x but they are more expensive. I assume these are faster discs.  Will they improve the performance on my inexpensive CD-ReWritter or are they for a higher end CD-ReWritter.
  Thank you for any reply.

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