I have just bought my first dvd rewriter.It is a NEC nd-3540 and is going to replace a little used cd rewriter.Purchased on the basis of price/reviews and my general ignorance.
Lots of questions arise.
1)Does it make any perfomance difference if it is master or slave?
2)It can apparantly handle all sorts of recording methods, what decides the method to use?
3)In general what type of media should i buy?
$)This is an oem version of the drive, without paperwork or software.Can i download a manual? Do i need to download the latest driver?I've looked at various NEC sites and cannot find manual or drivers.
Before anyone shouts at me for not reading 26000 posts,i've looked but i don't understand most of it.
General guidance would be much appreciated.Please hurry before i fall off my perch.

1) Not that I am aware of.
2) DAO (Disc At Once) is the best method.
3) High quality media. I prefer DVD-R. Some good makes are Tanyo Yuden (if you can get it), Verbitaim and Sony. I would look at the 8x media mainly.
4) If you go here http://www.de.nec.de./productoverview.php/id/491 you should be able to find the manuals etc for your drive. I cant see a new firmware for your drive on there right now, so it should be ok with what you have on it.

Ben

If you've got a spare slot in your case keep the CD writer. It is generally better for burning CDs than a DVD writer.
There are no drivers as such, assuming you're using XP or W2k. What is available is new firmware, either from NEC or modded firmware , links to which can be found in the NEC section of the Optical Drives forum.
Don't be in too much of a hurry to update firmware. Not only can it invalidate your warranty but done wrongly can kill the drive. Try what you have for a couple of months first then if you're finding you have problems then an upgrade may help.
As Ben says , get good quality media - 8x should be fine as many of these will burn at higher speeds anyway. I don't think -R or +R makes too much difference as long as it's quality. The media forum may help you here.

SVP & Aprmedia are reasonable online suppliers to try. Maybe Ben also has some suggestions for these as both he & I are Uk based.

i`ll second svp, they have good and not so good media just like most shops, but they have by far the best customer support i have come across.

Thanks a lot.Very helpful.I did hear some story that dvd to dvd copying benefitted from particular master/slave arrangements.
what about dvd rom, dvd ram?where do they figure ?
any preference as to versions of Nero?
don't go away,i'm bound to not know a lot more

Noob here..
Are Fuji discs as good as Tanyo Yuden? I thought I read that Fuji manufactured the Tanyo Yuden discs. I don't have the Tanyo Yuden discs availble to me at my local stores. But, I do have Fuji, Verbatum, Maxell, Memorex available everywhere. Just trying to find decent quality media to buy in bulk.

DVD to DVD copy is not as good as copying from DVD to hard drive, then from hard drive to DVD. Yes it can be done, but the general preference is to go to hd. Best to have your HD as master on primary ide, and Burner on Secondary IDE. Slave or master on secondary, only matters if you are using both at once (copying from one drive to another on same ide). If you really want to go from DVD to DVD, you want one burner on primary, and the other on secondary. But then you have HD and Burner trying to use IDE at same time. I would recommend the most current version of NERO. If your burner is capable of bitsetting, I would buy +R media, and bitset to -rom for greatest compatibility.

As long as the Fuji is Made In Japan, it should be Taiyo Yuden. Verbatim 16x is also very good quality.

I second both of harley2ride's posts. Don't actually go the route of on-the-fly copying , ie DVD-ROM to DVD writer. It's not worth the trouble, always go to HD first & then burn.
Also defragment your HD on a regular basis.

bitsetting ?

Most drives have the ability to change the booktype (bitset) of a dvd. You can change +r or +rw to -ROM. Some dvd players like -r media, some like +r, but almost all will read -rom. If you want to know more, do a search on bitsetting or booktype.

concerning media,what are -rom and -ram discs ?

dvd-rom is retail pressed dvd format.

dvd-ram is a re-writable disc in a caddy that works like a hard drive.

Anoiher silly, if making a dvd so be used in a commercial player,can you set it for multi-region and what format/type of disk should you use ?

The type of disk can be either -R or +R (if you use +R you should use bitsetting, but you have to use modified firmware to get it on the 3540, i've got dee's one from here and works like a dream).

Good DVD readers should read either -R or +R, but +R with bitsetting works with more than normal +R.

All your disks will be region free unless you tell your software to do different. There may be issues with PAL or NTSC if you want to send your disks overseas but otherwise no region problems for you.

If you were asking about DVD format as in DVD movie or data then you'll have to give more info on what you want to do.

I am really new to this so.. I read that ripping speeds were at about 5x without the liggydee firmware installed on the nd-3540a. My question was that if i install the firmware about how many X's will my Nec-3540a rip at? Im not looking for an exact answer but a rough answer will do. I am really anxious to apply this firmware but i want to know how much of a differencce it will make with the firmware applied. Thanks!!!