I just bought a Gateway FX530 it has a LiteOn dvd burner in it, will my samsung read my backups off it?

I can't guarantee that it will, but I currently use a lite-on burner for my back-ups and my samsung ms28 reads them just fine. I think media is more important that burner.

first this should be in backup,
With latest fw, most burner will work.
you can look at the compatibility thread.

moved,
rgds, soso

I have a samsung ms25 and a lite-on SHW-160P6S and it works with no problems. It makes perfect burns even with cheap "Dynex" brand media ("Ricoh" media code) from best buy (latest lite-on firmware installed).

Provided you use quality media (ie DL Verbatims with MKM media ID codes) then you should be fine with the Lite-On, that being said you will almost certainly have to update the firmware in order to be able to set the booktype to DVD-ROM prior to the burn, this is crucial to get a working DL DVD+R backup in most cases.

what kind of lite-on you got?

unforunately i beg to differ, I started out with a lite-on burner and everything started out fine, more recently my burner has stopped burning off successful backups and it got to the point where I was creating 25 coasters from a 25 pack of media.

I consulted my local pc expert and he has informed me that lite-on are the more "cheap and cheerful" in the dvd-rw scene and advised i get myself a pioneer as they get the better reviews from critics.

Initially i thought this was an easy way of of conning £24.99 out of me and so I requested permission to throw the drive at him if it didn't work in addition to a refund. permission was granted and i bought one from him.

So far no coasters and media I was using in the lite-on (and recieving bad burns with) have worked first time every time.

My advice: ORDER YOURSELF A PIONEER 112D!!! It's a far superior burner and you will not regret it!

Regards,
SodiumBA

Sodiumba,

respectfully disagree with you as far as the conclusion goes. It is very much based on your specific experience of a liteon going bad on you and I feel one must be careful to generalize from such situation.

A few years back, I had a pioneer 109 go bad after six months of use and do not feel I can generalize that to all pioneers . All my other pioneer went great, and so did the liteon.

They are two excellent burners: The pioneer with a slight advantage in terms of burning, the liteon offers also excellent burn (ref: cdfreaks site) with the added value of great scanning abilities. The ideal is to have both if you are a bit crazy about that stuff like me.
Either burner will do a fine job (if you want just one drive like most people do) then recommending replacing of a perfectly good liteon (before even tested) is not proper.

Having seen the level of activity of the liteon community at cdfreaks and the tweaked firmwares (hmmm that remembers me of another scene ) with some of the results obtained at great speed, it gives me direct info that contradict the opinion of the person who informed you on Liteon.

That said, I am no liteon freak, just feel it is not representative of the reality I have witnessed in years of playing with these.

Again very respectfully, soso

Agreed, maybe it is just me having a bad experience with the drive. Apologies for coming on so strong against Lite-On, I just wanted to add my two cents lol