Do current cd burners read subchannel data?

I need a little help. I purchased a new computer two years ago and installed a cheap dvd burner, a Samsung SH-224DB. Unlike my old drives, this one can't read subchannel data, so everytime I want to dump a protected PS1 disc I have to plug my old computer.

Does anybody know if this happens to every modern drive or did I just make a bad choice?

 

All the new drives are based on a few chipsets and are feature poor.
I would recommend you hunt down an old plextor drive.

I've been stockpiling drives for these reasons.

 

Thanks. That's similar to what's happening with newest floppy drives, the external ones and usb powered. Most of them can't read old 720 Kb formatted floppies. I often see people complaining because of this.

 

I'm posting this in case someone else finds it useful. I couldn't find detailed reviews on modern drives besides comments like "it's very silent/noisy" and such. So I purchased a cheap Lite-on iHAS124-14 (or iHAS124 F) and tested it myself, revealing that it can't read subchannel data.

Then, I tried an IDE to USB adapter, a Conceptronic CSATAi23U, which supposedly supports optical IDE drives, but it didn't work. I tried different drives and different operative systems, but none could recognize the IDE drives.

After that, I purchased a not so cheap brand new Plextor PX-891SAF. This is just the same rubbish with a different case and a higher price. It's not better than another drive in any way. Discs that can't be read on other drives, can't be read on this one either. Older models could read discs that other drives had trouble dealing with but it's not the case anymore. These two brands are no longer better than the rest.

I know there are some LG Bluray drives that support sbchannel data reading/writing but they're way too expensive. I'll keep using my old IDE drives on my old computer whenever I need to read subchannel data.

 

Did you try an IDE-to-SATA converter like this one? Try Craigslist/eBay to find older drives. I also have a couple drives just because the old ones read bad discs better.

 

If I've understood it correctly, that adapter is for using a SATA drive on an old computer. I wanted the opposite, an IDE drive on a new computer. I have four IDE drives, I just wanted to use them on my new computer instead of plugging the old one everytime I wanted to dump a libcrypted game or either get a SATA drive with the same features as my old IDE drives.

 

I think you want this one:

http://www.amazon.com/HDE®-SATA-Dri..._UL160_SR160,160_&refRID=0NJP99Q69MF6YVNTPH1E

 

Some adapters limit the drives, just get a proper external drive from plextor that has it's own housing as they will have made sure it works properly.

 

Thanks. I'll buy a good drive when I find an affordable one. Most modern drives don't even support LightScribe while it was a common feature not many years ago.

 

Subcode reading was always something that not all drives could do, and it doesn't surprise me that modern drives completely do away with it - optical media is dead or dying.
Even old Plextor drives won't help you with that, only a dozen or so of them can do *everything* right (most of them are the 7xx series).

I'd try using an internal IDE card, or an IDE to SATA converter. IDE/SATA to USB converters are always notoriously unreliable. For hard drives, they tend to report the entire drive as gone and dead, when they come across the first filesystem error (that can by fixed with chkdsk).

You might want to look up the reviews at CDRInfo.com, they mention whether the drive can read subcodes or not, sometimes only a few pages in to a review.

 

The Pioneer DVR drives can read subcodes (at least PQ ones, never tried reading the rest), and they are able to write all the others (I've burned copies of CD+G discs with it, which use those channels). They were fairly popular drives in the 00s, I've had at least three models from the DVR-107 to the DVR-216 (1xx ones are IDE, 2xx ones are SATA equivalents). On all the discs I've ripped, I got very accurate pregap checks (which rely on the PQ subcodes), even with very old apps like CDRWin, I got the same results as on a true Plextor drive using both EAC and Plextools.
They use a NEC chipset so equivalent NEC drives are quite likely to perform similarly.

Plextor 7xx series can definitely read subcodes and they are DVD drives as well.

I never bothered trying other drives since the Pioneer ones honestly did everything perfectly, the 216 I have still burns everything to this day, and I never get any bad burns as long as I'm not using Imgburn (which fails literally half the time for no reason).