Does anyone know how to make a CD/DVD duplication tower?

[tankman1989]

I have seen these CD or DVD duplication towers available from some hardware suppliers and they are pretty pricey, as in $1,800 for a 7-8 bay drive!

I found this page http://www.copystars.com/duplicator_barebone_8_ctg.htm and was wondering if anyone has dealt with them or anyone similar. I may have the need to make hundreds of CD's coming up and this is going to save a lot of time being able to burn a bunch at a time!

 

[JosephLeo]

If it's just a one-shot job then I would just go with Disc Makers. They are insanely cheap and you get full color printing on the CD's as well for that extra pizazz.

100 CD's for $370 + Shipping
1,000 CD's for $490 + Shipping

If you want them to package them as well, they have a HUGE variety of packing type from plain paper sleeves to jewel cases to their own unique packaging types and about 10 other more packaging types. Very cheap, very fast, very reliable.



And if you don't want to go that route then just buy a PC case with lots of drive bays- insert the desired amount of drives and a decent computer with a lot of memory (6 to 8 GB) and get writing. Although the first choice is obviously MUCH cheaper. Not to mention much more professional with the full color graphics.

Also, the cheapest DVD writer with the fastest available DVD writing speed (16x) is $29.99 + Shipping at NewEgg multiply this by say- 10 and you have $300 worth of drives alone. Lets see if I can build you a system for that.

Your case will need 10 5.25" drive bays. Best one for a low price I can find is this...
AZZA Solano 1000 - $124.99 ($79.99 after $45 MIR)

You will need to fill those drives with a DVD writer that can handle the current max DVD speed of 16x write speed- and you also need DVD-RAM support and DL support so you will need this...
Samsung 22X - $29.99 ea. * 10 = $299.90

To power said drives you will need a good power supply with plenty of molex power cables as well as have stable power so it should be 80+ certified.
IKONIX Vulcan 650 - $99.99

Also, you will need a fast SSD for faster read access. These things are quite expensive so you will want a small one (DVD only holds a max of 18.8GB anyway)
Intex X25 80GB SSD - $269.00

Now for the components I simply chose the best of the current generation of technology that is cheap. So I went with this.

• Motherboard: Zotac GF8200-D-E - $59.99 (39.99 After $20 MIR)
• Memory: GeIL Black Dragon 8GB (4x 2gb) - $137.99
• Processor: AMD Athlon II X2 240 $60.00

Now of course you will probably run this on a Linux distro, so all thats left to do afterward is do a manhunt for the right software that allows you to run 10 DVD writing sessions at a time. oh, and total for this build is $1,051.86 + Shipping (and in certain states +Tax) Of course you can drastically lower that price by going with less ram, a regular hard drive and a crummy PSU. But, that will waste a lot of time on your part.

 

[Kenhelms]

I sell quite a few of those. Buying the kit from copystar and then putting sony dvd drives in from my distributor. They are very popular among police departments and the like. Top notch quality and a great deal.

Disc makers- Thats insane. 370 for 100 cds? and not insane in a good way. I cant believe people pay that. You can buy a prebuilt duplicator, 100 cds + printable templates + jewel cases + 1 hour of your time and have less than that. The only advantage is that the cds they use are most likely printed direct to the plastic instead of a sticker, etc. You can always use lightscribe to do their covers as well, although that takes quite a bit longer.

If you build your own PC to sub as a duplicator(not for sure on the purpose of that? seems like a lot of needless work... and I would pass on the SSD, its expensive, and even commercial duplicators dont feel the need for it...) remember that you will also require the peripherals just like anything else.

 

[JosephLeo]

They're really only charging for the printing and their cost. As well as a small setup fee- all carefully bundled into a flat rate price.

It is in fact directly printed onto the CD and not a sticker. I always use them for bulk projects (Churches, Corporations and even the rare Real Estate advertiser) because they're just simply too professional and the machines that they use to get that quality are far too expensive for me to ever even think about buying.

 

[noah]

• Motherboard: Zotac GF8200-D-E - $59.99 (39.99 After $20 MIR)
• Memory: GeIL Black Dragon 8GB (4x 2gb) - $137.99
• Processor: AMD Athlon II X2 240 $60.00

You still have to add in some way of attaching 10 burners. So add in SATA cards and probably a different MB with more PCI slots.

 

[JosephLeo]

You still have to add in some way of attaching 10 burners. So add in SATA cards and probably a different MB with more PCI slots.

The board has 2 PCI slots, that's more than enough for 2 4-port sata cards. It already have 4 onboard SATA ports. So hey, you can actually throw 11 in there + the 1 SSD.

I also didn't include peripherals and blank media as well. I was just giving a basic hardware cost.

 

[jbutler9]

I came into possession of a Win95 Touchscreen SCSI Duplicator and I have no idea what to do with it, I will post a picture later tonight.

It just looks cool, I want to figure out how to remove the touch screen and do something cool with it, any ideas.

 

[JosephLeo]

I came into possession of a Win95 Touchscreen SCSI Duplicator and I have no idea what to do with it, I will post a picture later tonight.

It just looks cool, I want to figure out how to remove the touch screen and do something cool with it, any ideas.

Try modding it by throwing a nano-itx or even pico-itx motherboard in it and make it a touch screen pc that looks like the bottom end of a vacuum cleaner since that is what those things look like to me.

 

[jbutler9]

random pics of Spaceballs floating in my head....ahhh, what a great movie.

 

[JosephLeo]

random pics of Spaceballs floating in my head....ahhh, what a great movie.

 

[tankman1989]

Is there software that can make all bays burn the same thing at the same time?

I have a box that I could use right now with XP Pro or install Linux and have 3-4 DVD drives. Could I try using those even though they are not all the same?

I saw someone suggest 6-8GB of ram, doesn't that seem like an over kill if you are only burning one image? I guess if you are burning a DL DVD, it might be worth while but from what I ave seen, most pieces of software don't load the full image into RAM when they start burning, or am I missing something?

 

[JosephLeo]

Is there software that can make all bays burn the same thing at the same time?

I have a box that I could use right now with XP Pro or install Linux and have 3-4 DVD drives. Could I try using those even though they are not all the same?

I saw someone suggest 6-8GB of ram, doesn't that seem like an over kill if you are only burning one image? I guess if you are burning a DL DVD, it might be worth while but from what I ave seen, most pieces of software don't load the full image into RAM when they start burning, or am I missing something?

Well, if your running 10 instances of the burn application it can get pretty taxing on your system. So, I would imagine you would want a lot of memory and a good SSD. Also, sorry I don't know of any software, But I do know of a hardware based system that duplicated 7-sata ports.

It's $160.00 + Shipping at Ily.com.

 

[ProTech Support]

Well, if your running 10 instances of the burn application it can get pretty taxing on your system. So, I would imagine you would want a lot of memory and a good SSD. Also, sorry I don't know of any software, But I do know of a hardware based system that duplicated 7-sata ports.

It's $160.00 + Shipping at Ily.com.

That is actually pretty cool.

 

[angry_geek]

I have a tower with 6 DVD Burners. I create the image and tell nero to burn to multiple burners. Takes about an hour to burn 100 discs.

 

[hondablaster]

I used to copy 3 DVDs at a time constantly. I didn’t need anything special other then the 3 SATA drives. I had Plextor brand drives and they were top notch in their day all 16x speed with the ability to compare pit and land depths. I used Taiyo Yuden 8x DVD+Rs. And I went nuts copying! I easily copied upwards of 2000 disks.

If I remember right I used Nero 6 or 7 and checked then used multiple recorder feature. I didn’t need anything that special to be honest. I also burned at 8x because the massive vibration of so many disks forced the burn to slow down to 4x-8x anyways. Also the burn quality was DRAMATICALLY better at 8x, at 16x the last 500MB was in terrible condition and unreadable on lower end drives.

To Recap: The media was verified genuine Taiyo Yuden anything else had a high error correction rate. DVD+R made better quality disks then DVD-R Tayio Yuden. The drives were plextor.

The PC itself was XP Professional. (back in year 2004)
AMD 3000 socket 754
DDR 400 @ 1gb
a 160 gb Maxtor PATA
The original source was usually in an .ISO, .NRG image format. (this made everything very smooth) The buffer was always at Neros max back then I think was 80mb. (Im unsure) I did use imgBurn when they switched from DVD Decrptor to ImgBurn, but cannot remember how well it worked out I remember Nero as my main software. I’m sure imgburn will work since they have had some years to improve it.

Overall it was very easy to make a 3 drive copier and that was with very little cash $$$. And I did not have half the experience I do today. I think that some of the hardware listed from Joseph Leo may be a bit overkill. I think that the SDD and 8 GB ram is maybe bit excessive. If drive bandwidth is an issue I did have two HDDs burning two separate images. (however I believe that SATAII duplicates and buffers the data so drive speed should not be a factor someone can correct me if im mistaken) If I am mistaken you could grab two cheapie SATAII drives. And either have the image copied twice, set up raid 0. Or just have two drives feeding 2 sets of 4 burners!!!! OR 3 SATAII feeding 9 buners etc.

I’m just sharing my experience and hope this brings out closer to what your trying to do for less cash!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Im at school so forgive my mistakes I gotta split!!!! Take care!

 

[JosephLeo]

That is actually pretty cool.

I know, I was amazed when I found it. I didn't even know things like that exist until a couple months ago.

 

[tankman1989]

I used to copy 3 DVDs at a time constantly. I didn’t need anything special other then the 3 SATA drives. I had Plextor brand drives and they were top notch in their day all 16x speed with the ability to compare pit and land depths. I used Taiyo Yuden 8x DVD+Rs. And I went nuts copying! I easily copied upwards of 2000 disks.

If I remember right I used Nero 6 or 7 and checked then used multiple recorder feature. I didn’t need anything that special to be honest. I also burned at 8x because the massive vibration of so many disks forced the burn to slow down to 4x-8x anyways. Also the burn quality was DRAMATICALLY better at 8x, at 16x the last 500MB was in terrible condition and unreadable on lower end drives.

To Recap: The media was verified genuine Taiyo Yuden anything else had a high error correction rate. DVD+R made better quality disks then DVD-R Tayio Yuden. The drives were plextor.

The PC itself was XP Professional. (back in year 2004)
AMD 3000 socket 754
DDR 400 @ 1gb
a 160 gb Maxtor PATA
The original source was usually in an .ISO, .NRG image format. (this made everything very smooth) The buffer was always at Neros max back then I think was 80mb. (Im unsure) I did use imgBurn when they switched from DVD Decrptor to ImgBurn, but cannot remember how well it worked out I remember Nero as my main software. I’m sure imgburn will work since they have had some years to improve it.

Overall it was very easy to make a 3 drive copier and that was with very little cash $$$. And I did not have half the experience I do today. I think that some of the hardware listed from Joseph Leo may be a bit overkill. I think that the SDD and 8 GB ram is maybe bit excessive. If drive bandwidth is an issue I did have two HDDs burning two separate images. (however I believe that SATAII duplicates and buffers the data so drive speed should not be a factor someone can correct me if im mistaken) If I am mistaken you could grab two cheapie SATAII drives. And either have the image copied twice, set up raid 0. Or just have two drives feeding 2 sets of 4 burners!!!! OR 3 SATAII feeding 9 buners etc.

I’m just sharing my experience and hope this brings out closer to what your trying to do for less cash!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Im at school so forgive my mistakes I gotta split!!!! Take care!

Thank you very much for your input! This really helps! I guess now I need to look for some burners that are the same model. I too have had great success with plextors!

 

[Morrison5891]

Is there software that can make all bays burn the same thing at the same time?

I have a box that I could use right now with XP Pro or install Linux and have 3-4 DVD drives. Could I try using those even though they are not all the same?

I saw someone suggest 6-8GB of ram, doesn't that seem like an over kill if you are only burning one image? I guess if you are burning a DL DVD, it might be worth while but from what I ave seen, most pieces of software don't load the full image into RAM when they start burning, or am I missing something?

Nero works great... Just make sure you tick the "use multi burner" option.