Yes, that's right...me being the nerd I am - I am now the proud owner of a new Lite-On 832S. What is an 832S you ask? Well, I've finally upgraded to a DVD-RW drive. Not only a DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, DVD+R9, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-ROM, CD-ROM drive, it also burns Dual Layer (DL) DVDs. Even though DL media is still quite expensive ($15/each), when prices come down, it will be quite nice to be able to back-up 8.5 gigs on each disc (the DVD-R discs I bought today burn 4.7 gigs per disc).

I just finished burning my first disc, which, ironically enough, is a back-up of all my various artist and soundtrack CDs I have ripped to my computer. Right now, I have about 9.23 gigs of ripped CDs on my computer (I own all the CDs, so don't hunt me down RIAA) and it took quite a while to back them all up at the high quality I insisted on, so I'm now backing them up from my backed up hard drive to DVD-R format. So, if (god forbid) my MP3/backup drive ever fails, I won't have to re-rip all my CDs again.

Tonight, I'm going to see how backing up a DVD works (don't hunt me down movie industry - I'm "backing up" a non-copyrighted disc without any CSS encryption), but it looks like it will probably take all night to rip the disc, then it will be burned in the morning, but it has to be compressed since true DVDs pressed by the studios can fit 9 gigs of information, and then it has to be burned...way too much trouble for my 700+ DVDs (not to mention the ~$1/disc cost of the DVD media).

But yeah, I'm in seventh heaven right now with my new burner. I figure with my next paycheck or two, I'll start assembling the necessary parts for my next machine (power supply first probably, then cooling system (Zalman external water cooling), then maybe an SATA hard drive or two and then finally the motherboard, chip (Athlon 64 939 pin) and RAM). My new computer will be sweet - especially with this nice new DVD-RW drive in it.

URL: ::: LiteOn Technology Corporation :::