PS1/2 Is x10 a safe burn speed for PS1 games? Should I get a slower burner?

CaseyDog

Well-Known Member
OP
Member
Joined
Jun 12, 2019
Messages
175
Trophies
0
Age
22
Location
New York
XP
680
Country
United States
I've been using a cheap external LG CD player to burn PS1 ISOs onto Verbatim CD-R's through Imgburn, and I just noticed the drive's been forcing the program to burn them at its apparently minimum 10x speed instead of my chosen x1. Is x10 safe for the laser? Should I find a CD burner that goes lower? I've seen this brand recommended https://www.amazon.com/Plextor-PX-8...xtor+external+cd+burner&qid=1583599626&sr=8-3.

I've also recently read that going as low as x1 or x2 causes problems on modern CDs, so it's a good thing it wasn't working I guess. Lastly, my Verbatim CD-R's say 52x speed on them. Does that matter?
 
  • Like
Reactions: Alexander1970

Dust2dust

Well-Known Member
Member
Joined
Jun 17, 2010
Messages
2,427
Trophies
2
XP
4,411
Country
Canada
1x or 2x was the recommended standard back in the glory days of the PS1. But back then, the CDs were designed for such low speeds, and the burners supported 1x and 2x. Nowadays, of course, we have much different material. I would say burn at the lowest speed your material allows, and then test it on your PS1. It will probably be perfectly burnt.
 

CaseyDog

Well-Known Member
OP
Member
Joined
Jun 12, 2019
Messages
175
Trophies
0
Age
22
Location
New York
XP
680
Country
United States
My lowest allowed drive speed is 10x, could that be too much for the laser over time? Does the CD-R speed matter too? I asked both of these in the original post.
 
Last edited by CaseyDog,

Uiaad

GBAtemp's resident guinea pig
Member
Joined
Dec 23, 2008
Messages
591
Trophies
2
Location
United Kingdom
XP
3,268
Country
United Kingdom
My lowest allowed drive speed is 10x, could that be too much for the laser over time? Does the CD-R speed matter too? I asked both of these in the original post.

To be honest buddy, these machines are quickly coming up to 30 years old now and quite honestly, these lasers are gonna start failing regardless of if you are burned CD's or not
 

FAST6191

Techromancer
Editorial Team
Joined
Nov 21, 2005
Messages
36,798
Trophies
3
XP
28,373
Country
United Kingdom
My lowest allowed drive speed is 10x, could that be too much for the laser over time? Does the CD-R speed matter too? I asked both of these in the original post.
Disc burn speed mattered when we had poorer inks and burner drives without much in the way of a buffer with the interrupted writing that resulted troubling simple consoles/certain types of read that normal PCs would not do or maybe forcing multiple reads (and on consoles slowdowns, crashes, apparent read errors and what have you).

Today we have wonderful inks and buffers probably not all that far off the size of a CD (not to mention hard drives to feed it far faster than back when to further reduce the chance of an underrun). Indeed trying to burn slow might cause more problems than it solves as the low speed options of a lot of modern drives are very suspect when it comes to burning CDs.

CD-R speed rating is something of a reflection of the disc quality, though not the whole story either. As long as it is in the 30x+ range it is probably going to be fine, and frankly I would not look too askance at a 16x if it was manufactured reasonably recently. Certainly don't go buying vintage discs.
Beyond that most drives these days are slower than the max speed CDRs eventually went to. Not entirely sure why that is (some will tell me cheapness of vendors, others that it is to avoid a disc spinning and going pop rather spectacularly) but it is what it is.
 

supersega

Well-Known Member
Newcomer
Joined
Apr 25, 2018
Messages
83
Trophies
0
Location
A place in a place
XP
184
Country
United States
Nah, burn speed really doesn't matter these days. Drives have gotten way more advanced and so have the discs themselves. I actually did a test burning on the same Verbatim media from the same lot for my JVC X'Eye and the quickest loading one was the x16 when I burnt discs at 1x, 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x, 32x. Others were all perfectly fine though, YMMV. It may just be the drive I burnt them in for all I know.
 
  • Like
Reactions: zfreeman

micp

Well-Known Member
Member
Joined
Apr 3, 2020
Messages
149
Trophies
0
XP
446
Country
United Kingdom
I've been burning at MAX using Verbatim DataLifePlus discs and haven't had any issues for a while. I tried burning at 1x, 2x, 4x but I'd get sound glitches.

As others have said, these lasers are eventually going to need replacing. I know on one PS1 I had to adjust the pot for it to read any game, real or burned.
 
Last edited by micp,

Site & Scene News

Popular threads in this forum

General chit-chat
Help Users
    K3Nv2 @ K3Nv2: Werid went to put my ps5 ssd into my pcs m.2 bay and no detection