I have a mystery CD burner; how do I tell what model it is? Also recommendations for free CD burner programs?

March 31, 2004 2:49 AM

I've just bought a CD-Burner from ebay. No maker's mark on it, so how can I tell what model it is? (lots of serial numbers all over it). Also, I need a good CD burning program. Can anyone recommend any free applications?

Ignore first part of that. I googled E118405 and it came up with Philips.

posted by Frasermoo to Computers & Internet (11 answers total)

Deepburner is pretty good - but unfortunately doesn't seem to have a 'normalise' function, should you have several audio files from different sources at different volumes.
posted by Pericles at 3:35 AM on March 31, 2004

E-mail me if you want something that's not free.
posted by Keyser Soze at 4:08 AM on March 31, 2004

Assuming you're in Windows, CD Burner XP is a pretty decent program and is freeware.
posted by SteveInMaine at 4:33 AM on March 31, 2004

Use nero for your cd-burning. Others try to be as nice, but they're far from it. It's not free, but it's online as a demo.

*cough*limewire*cough*
posted by mkelley at 4:43 AM on March 31, 2004

Nero has several interesting plug-ins as well.
posted by grabbingsand at 5:30 AM on March 31, 2004

Nero is an excellent choice. Well worth the $$, not too much $$ either.
Or, there are other ways of obtaining it....mkelley....
posted by a3matrix at 7:34 AM on March 31, 2004

To ID the drive:

There's an awesome Windows hardware sniffer called the Belarc Advisor. Plug in your drive, boot up and run the Advisor.
posted by bonehead at 7:48 AM on March 31, 2004

You can also use the FCC ID search the next time you have a mysterious electronic device in front of you.
posted by cmonkey at 9:26 AM on March 31, 2004

Anyone know of a free burning program with normalise enabled? The computer I recently bought has Nero pre-installed, but I can't get him to work; the "finalise disc" option is permamently greyed out, and when it claims to have burned a disc, it's just a coaster - neither the PC nor a home stereo will blast out the Velvet Underground/ Alma Cogan/ Doris Day mash-ups that I so wanted to hear...
posted by Pericles at 9:32 AM on March 31, 2004

Maybe Burrrn should prove helpful. And you get Replaygain support with that, which is way better than normalisation (see here).
posted by kchristidis at 1:24 PM on March 31, 2004

For pleasantly minimalist, free burner software (just a GUI for a number of open-source tools, a bit slow for MP3 decoding in my configuration though), I use burnatonce.
posted by abcde at 8:25 PM on March 31, 2004