[lug] CD-R drives?

[socket at peakpeak.com]

As some of you know, I purchased a new system this summer from a
little mom-&-pop vendor (a very bad idea, in retrospect!) in my
hometown, Grand Junction.  I've had nothing but trouble with the
system.  An update, after I spent several weeks fiddling with BIOS
settings, I took the box to the store, under warranty.  They decided
my PCI ne2k network card and Adaptec aic7xxx were incompatible with
each other (despite the fact that they coexisted on my old P133
system) and gave me a ISA ethernet card.  Hmph.  Not a solution,
IMNSHO.

Anyway, I'm getting worried about my hard drive.  It's a 10-gig IDE
Fujitsu, and I've been getting kernel messages about
"SectorIDNotFound" and such things that seem innocuous because fsck
doesn't complain every bootup.  However, I have had three major fsck
incidents lasting several reboots after some floods of kernel messages
from the IDE subsystem in the last two months, and I think I *really*
got a lemon here.  I'm interested in purchasing a CD-R(W?)  now,
because of the amount of data I don't want to lose.  I don't mind
reinstalling the system if necessary, but I *want* my academic works,
short stories, emails, essays and such somewhere relatively
*permanent*.

Does anybody have recommendations for CD-Rs with good price/quality
proportion?  I'm quite seriously going to archive (it's about time)
and demand a refund now.  I've taken the box into the shop 3 times
already, enough is enough.

Advice welcome, on CD-Rs and new desktop system recommendations.

-- 
Chris Riddoch                  socket at peakpeak.com
Will provide pseudo-insightful commentary for food
(303)938-0672      http://www.peakpeak.com/~socket