Hey guys, Is it a good idea to get an extra DVD-ROM that's used just for reading - watching DVDs and playing games only so that you won't wear out your DVD-RW drives? In the old days before drive emulation were commonplace, I heard that DVD-ROM only drives are better at reading backed up (and i mean backed up, not pirated which you can run without a disc using patches anyway) copy protected games compared to CD-R/DVD-ROM combo drives or even DVD-RW drives. Is this still true? Can anyone verify this? Also, what DVD drive would you recommend, if I wanted to flash the firmware to region free or to flash it so that the max "change region" limit of 5 times is reset everytime the PC is rebooted? Thanks.
There is so little difference in price that it's not worth trying to find one. Burners usually fail in the burning half rather than the reading half.. I use deceased burners as ripping drives. As for firmware for region free... you will find that people don't usually bother writing new firmwares for dvd-rom drives.. so again you may as well go for a burner. You may have to flash the firmware every 5 region changes.. that takes seconds and it really isn't a problem. Not many drives have forever region free firmwares. Your best place to look while researching is the firmwares/burners area on cd-freaks