Will a new DVD drive be faster than my old one?

catalogue · 20 Oct 2015

I need to copy many dozens of data discs (DVD-R) onto an external hard drive and want to know if a new DVD writer will be faster than my existing one. So the main need here is for fast *reading* rather than writing.

I can't find the drive speed anywhere. 2011 Thinkpad T520 CTO which means I chose the specs myself. Device Manager says the burner is hl-dt-st dvdram gt33n.

Are there differences in read speeds between DVD writers? It's taking me 10 minutes to copy 4.0 or 4.1 Gb.

fireberd · 20 Oct 2015

The spec's that I found doing a search are not very good. 4X burning speed for DVD's and 32X for CD's. You may want to consider replacing it with a (compatible) higher rated speed drive.

Along with the rated speed of the DVD burner drive, you have to have DVD-R (or +R) discs rated for the speed.
e.g. if you have a DVD burner rated at 16X burning speed and DVD blanks rated for 4X then it will only burn at 4X. Different than CD-R's that, except in rare cases, will burn at the maximum rated burn speed of the DVD/CD burner.

Dpending on the data to burn, it may be better to use CD-R's since they will burn at higher speed. You will need more CD-R blanks but you will burn faster.

catalogue · 20 Oct 2015

I am talking about reading, not writing! Please read my post again. I only need to do a lot of reading from the DVD drive, not writing. If a new drive doesn't read faster than the old one then I'm not going to bother with it.

fireberd · 20 Oct 2015

Sorry about misreading. Its not only the drive read speed, but the PC itself. I have a similar Lenovo, Ideapad with i5 and the PC is slow so I wouldn't expect fast CD/DVD drive reads. But a full DVD of data will take time as it is a lot of data. Even a full CD of data takes a while even on my fast i7 3770 desktop system.

Layback Bear · 20 Oct 2015

From post #1

I need to copy many dozens of data discs (DVD-R) onto an external hard drive and want to know if a new DVD writer will be faster than my existing one. So the main need here is for fast *reading* rather than writing.

The speeds will also depend on your system and what motherboard ports the player is plugged into. It will also depend on what port the external drive is plugged into and the port speed. Their are many factors that come into play when moving date from point (A) to point (B).

This is my player.
HL-DT-ST BD-RE WH14NS40

Max 14x BD-R Writing Speed
Supports BDXL (128GB) Discs
3D Blu-ray Title Playback & M-Disc™ Support
SATA Interface

I always thought that the write speed was also the read speed.
I have never seen specs that give you read speed.
But I really haven't spent a lot of time looking either.