Hello forums,

one of my DVD writers died a violent death yesterday (due to not f*ing working for the one-time-too-many'th time, being incapable of mounting an ordinary, pressed DVD-ROM and hosing two CD-Rs in one evening), and I'm looking for a replacement. I'd like to have a SATA-driven device, capable of writing to and reading from CD and DVD-media (including DVD-RAM). What I really want is reliability - I want a drive that is best-of-class in reading discs of all kinds and conditions, no matter what sinister copy protection scheme tries to keep me from the data I purchased or how gruesome the condition of the disk to be read is - I want it read, period.
Same goes for writing - I don't need insane speeds, but I'd like a drive that doesn't toast my media to crap. I want the disks written to just effin' work, anywhere.
I'd beh appy if the drive's firmware would prefer working silently over working at ridiculously high rounds per minute, that's not a priority though (hdparm could take care of that at the end of the day).

What can you recommend, and what emperical data do you have to back up your recommendation?

Thanks for your advice!