Re: [gentoo-user] new machine : DVD drive

[Michael Mol]

On Mon, Aug 20, 2012 at 6:21 AM, Philip Webb <purslow@××××××××.net> wrote:
> Apologies for the elementary questions, but I'm a bit slow to change (smile).
>
> In designing my new machine, I assumed that I would simply transfer
> the CD drive from the existing box to the new one,
> but (1) the new mobo seems to have only SATA sockets
> & (2) CD drives seem to be going the same way as diskette drives,
> so I'm now planning to buy a new DVD drive & to start using DVDs.
> I wb using them only for back-ups, not playing music or videos.
>
> This looks like a good enough item :
>   ASUS DRW-24B1ST 24x SATA Black R 48x W 8x OEM : CAD 24,99
>
> Can anyone answer a few rather basic questions ?
> (1) do I need to configure the kernel to find the drive ?
> (2) what software do Gentoo users use to read/write DVDs ?
> (3) are there rewritable DVDs, as there used to be rewritable CDs ?
> -- among the specs are much slower speeds labelled 'RW'.
> (4) anything else I sb aware of ?

This thread has exploded into arcane info irrelevant to you. So here's
what I recommend:

Walk into any old store and buy a $15-$30 drive. Most burners these
days support burning CD-R, CD-RW, DVD+R, DVD-R, DVD+RW, DVD-RAM.
Writing dual-layer discs is slightly less common, but still cheap and
easy to get.

Long and short of it, just go out and get a drive; just about any of
them will do what you need them to do.

As for kernel support, once you get past the SATA/AHCI learning curve,
it's a piece of cake. The standard for writing to SATA CD burners is
essentially the same as it was for ATAPI burners, and both SATA and
ATAPI are very similar (in that they borrow heavily from SCSI). Just
about any software that can write to a CD burner should have no
trouble writing to a DVD burner.
-- 
:wq