Wide World of Women

leaving the details out, i think my dvd burner is no good anymore

would it be the burner or the pc's fault if when it does burn a dvd some files come out corrupt?

i've been thinking of getting an external one but most says usb 2.0, how do i know if my pc supports that? it's like 5 years old btw.

Before you get a new burner try to find what exactly the problem is. It's probably either the burner, the software, or the discs. If you get problems with different discs and software, then it's likely your burner.

well, most of the time now, when i put in a dvd to either burn or has been burned it won't read it, it just does a small half second grinding noise a few times and then nothing happens

when it does begin to burn, it sometimes stops at 0.5% and says a calibration error with my discs but i've bought new ones and i get the same problems

Have you tried to put an actual movie in the dvd player to see if it will play? If you get the same results I would say its time for a new burner. But from what you have told me I would probably go ahead and get a new one, but thats just me. But go ahead and try a movie in there anyways just to see if it will play.

Plus they arent expensive now anyways.

I just put two discs in my ps3 and i noticed that the folders are in alphabetical order and i'm guessing they get burned that way and that always at around the halfway point is when the files get corrupt

tried the dvd's, just hear that small grinding noise, like the dvd is scratching against something

Just from the sounds of it I would say time for a new burner. If you dont want to install the dvd burner in the pc then go usb. Nothing wrong with them at all and they are pretty cheap now.

1. Right-click on My Computer. Click Properties.
2. Click on the Hardware Tab. Or, if there is a Device Manager tab click on that and skip step 3.
3. Click the Device Manager button.
4. A list opens up. You should have an item in there called "Universal Serial Bus Controllers", or something to do with Universal Serial Bus or USB anyway. Click on the plus symbol next to that.
5. If you see an item that says Enhanced USB Host Controller, your computer has USB 2.0. That's good, because USB 2.0 is faster than USB 1.1. Some common USB 2.0 host controllers you may see are: Intel Enhanced, SiS Enhanced, VIA Enhanced, ALi Enhanced, Standard Enhanced, and NEC Enhanced. The important thing is that it has the word "Enhanced" somewhere. If you do not have the word enhanced anywhere, then you have USB v.1.1.

Hope that helps you out

I have a Standard Enhanced PCI to USB Host Controller.

I've had bad experiences trying to install things inside a pc so I would rather go external.

Thing is, I burn around 2 or 3 DVD-R's a week of clips, pictures and all that good stuff. Right now I have around 774 GB total, so i was also thinking of getting an external hard drive.

Nothing wrong with external hard drive at all. I even go as far as doing both, using blank dvds and external drive. I usually just have a folder and once it has about 4gb worth of stuff I will archive to dvd and external. The thing is, you can burn the files to dvd and then store them away and only access them when you want to watch them or recover files, whereas the external drive you will continue accessing every time you go to transfer. Again I think either choice will be fine, some may chime in saying one is better than the other. Just remember its all opinion based.

This should last you a year great price
http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?s ... caid=17653

that sure is sweet looking

Better deal but i don't know this brand
http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?s ... caid=17653

so i got a hard drive a few weeks ago and it works great except last night when i tried to transfer a 4.5 GB file it said i didn't have enough space

i can transfer 1GB folders no problem, and i have more than enough space left

is it just because the file is too big?

If it's Windows, then the problem is probably the drive is a fat32 file system that only handles up to 4GB per file. On XP it's right on the properties if you need to check. You could transfer everything out of it reformat to the drive to NTFS that can handle large files.

thanks

Congrats on the new hard drive. What size did you end up getting?

it was a western digital 750 gb