first question ... did this forum re-do it's database, my old username no longer works :\.
anyway, on to my questions.
background info:
i have a nec 3550a, and a pioneer 111d flashed to the dang bros 8.29 firmware. after i got the pioneer and flashed the firmware, my burns were great at 6x. everyone on these forums told me it's not good to test the quality of the burn on the drive you burned the disc on, so i used the nec with Nero cd-dvd speed at 5x to test the quality of the burns on the pioneer. the nec would report all high 90s test scores, then all of the sudden my test scores got very bad. i thought it was the pioneer going on me, but today i put an old data disc in the nec and it was making loud noises as the disc was spinning, so now i'm thinking the nec drive is just going, and it's giving me bad scores because the drive is messed up. if i test the discs on the pioneer i get like 99% test scores, whereas the nec will give me 70-80s on the same disc. however, as i stated before, everyone has said not to trust the tests done on the same drive as the burn.
my question:
right now the nec drive is only a testing drive, and the drive i use to pull stuff off discs, i don't use it to burn at all. the pioneer only burns, nothing else.
assuming the pioneer drive isn't just going bad, what drive would be the best for testing the discs burned with the pioneer, or testing burns in general?
i do a lot of video recordings with my friends, small movies type stuff. i back up a lot of raw footage that builds up fast on my HD that i clear off frequently, so to know the quality of the burn is reliable is very important to me.
