I bought a Samsung Writemaster (SHL-183) for a computer I put built over the summer. It has never burned a cd or dvd correctly. I worried at first that maybe it was an issue with using Ubuntu but after further testing it became clear that the drive was defective. I plan to return it for repair or replacement soon, though I've not heard particularly good things about Samsung's RMA process. My last DVD burner was a Benq and I'm starting to wish I had just kept it because it was the best burner I've ever owned. Benq and Lite On merged in 2006 so I think I may choose Lite On optical drives in the future.

Though it took some searching I finally found the form to check the warranty status for a Maxtor drive I had purchased. The bad news is that the drive is no longer under warranty. I suppose I've had the drive longer than a year though I will check to be sure. In any case it says the warranty expired in July 2007 so I wasn't even close. The drive is a Maxtor DiamondMax 11 500GB and I have to say I'm disappointed that it has died so soon since it is mostly a storage and backup drive and is therefore not used (powered on) very frequently. I'm not sure if there are any other usage factors that would have contributed to it's quick demise but if there are I wish I knew what they were so that they could be mitigated.