Should I Worry About Mt. Rainier Support? 20
"Now if you're not familiar with it the idea is to make it so you can use CD-RWs as floppies (same as DirectCD) only it's supports things like defect correction (instead of making the OS do that work) and eliminate formatting times. But the drive doesn't support writing to the format. Is this something that could be added in a firmware upgrade? Also, it looks like Mt. Rainier is also supposed to be for DVD+RW discs. Is this true?
Mt. Rainier drives have been on the market for a while now. It's not too common because it requires 3rd party software if the OS doesn't support it natively (I don't think it will be in Windows until Longhorn, and it looks like there are patches for the Linux kernel).
Can it be added with a firmware upgrade? Have a better drive suggestion? Can it be added with just software? Will it be a moot issue because of recordable DVD drives?"
Re:Mt Rainier (Score:1, Funny)
Looks pretty big from Seattle. ;-)
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-Balam
Re:Mt Rainier (Score:1)
Re:Mt Rainier (Score:2)
Ask yourself this (Score:2, Insightful)
Alternative? (Score:2, Informative)
Another Alternative (Score:2, Informative)
Probably not (Score:3, Informative)
If there's demand, Sony will probably do something similar for their drive in the future.
Re:Probably not (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, perhaps they can, but it's up to the manufacturer. For example, I have a Pioneer DVD drive that wants to read all DVDs with 16x speed. Needless to say, it's a loud drive to watch movies with. I complained to Pioneer and asked if they could release a firmware patch to slow down the drive. They replied something along the lines "it would be impossible because the hardware couldn't support it". I consider that reply as bullshit as the drive already
Re:Probably not (Score:1)
Re:Probably not (Score:2, Informative)
Page even says: "Note. works with Pioneer 6 series models only." Why is that? Why isn't any other model supported? I wish manufacturers would release source code to firmware too so I could fix the issue by myself when the manufacturer is just too lazy.
Re:Probably not (Score:1)
Re:Probably not (Score:3, Informative)
There's a hacked firmware out there which turns it into the LTR-40125S, which adds Mt. Ranier support and runs at 40x burn, 12x rewrite, 48x read, instead of the 32x10x40.
Haven't tried it though.
Future Proofing vs. Cost (Score:2, Informative)
Firmware upgrades... (Score:4, Informative)
Clarification of Mt Rainier support requirements (Score:2, Interesting)
It depends (Score:2)
Keep in mind that in some circles, packet writing of CDs is considered an excellent way to lose your data, and nothing more.
Re:It depends (Score:1)
It's a known fact that traditional packet writing is very unreliable because a few minor defects can render an entire disc unreadable.AFAIK, this is one of the things that Mount Rainier intended to address with its built-in defect management. Hence, Mount Rainier would be a must-have if anyone wants to use packet writing in general.
Mount Rainier, packet writing and DVD-RAM (Score:2, Interesting)
I agreed with all the previous posters that if a drive doesn't support Mount Rainier already, don't count on a firmware upgrade being available in the future.
Philips latest 4x DVD+RW drive DVDRW416K [philips.com] is the first DVD+RW drive supports Mount Rainier. Note that it was just announced at CeBit last month and it's not shipping yet.
Do consider that if Mount Rainier is important to you, alternatively you might want to consider DVD-RAM. The new Panasonic LF-D521 can read and write DVD-RAM, DVD-R/RW and CD-R/RW