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Sony DRU-500A Review

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the burn-this-beotch dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Just found a nice review of the Sony DRU-500A" This looks to be damn solid DVD burner. It's amazing how much prices on these things have come down. It might be time for me to make my epic film starring CowboyNeal, Samzenpus and Hemos in a moving story about Love, Friendship, and Growing Up in the Face of Adversity. I probably should write a script or something before I start filming. Or not.

5 of 201 comments (clear)

  1. Skip to the end and avoid 8 clicks/page loads... by wherley · · Score: 5, Informative
    Conclusion of review here. Highlights:
    • "Sony has done a nice job with this drive."
    • "The software that came with the drive works, but i would suggest an other recording program. RecordNow is way to limited"
    • "The bad side of the drive are the DVD read speeds. 2x DVD"
    • "For this moment, I can suggest this drive."
  2. I have one. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Very nice drive, will burn a 4GB DVD+R disc in about 20 minutes, using about 5% CPU time on my Win2K Athlon 1700.

    Some problems:

    - the promised packet writing software (DLA) is not yet available.

    - the included burning software will not burn an ISO image

    - Using DVD-R media, I burned 3 coasters in a row. DVD+R has been 100% perfect so far.

    I would say this is a state of the art drive that is well ahead of the software available to run it. Expect many more of these types of drives that support both DVD-R and DVD+R.

    For $350, as a backup device alone, this thing is amazing.

  3. I have one. by NetJunkie · · Score: 5, Informative

    I like it. I originally ordered one from Dell but they pushed my shipping date WAY back so I grabbed one at CompUSA three weeks ago. It works well and I've had no problems. I'm only using 1x media right now, except for the included DVD+RW disc.

    The only issue right now is software support. Most apps don't support this drive, yet, but they should have updates out any day. Definately a good drive to cover all your bases.

    I've used the discs in my notebook, XBox, and DVD player.

  4. Another review source by Boone^ · · Score: 5, Informative

    is here from CDRLabs.com

  5. Re:Burning times by bedessen · · Score: 5, Informative
    What is 1x speed for a DVD-writer. Is it the same as a CD-writer (150KB/s). If so... it's still a looong time to burn a 4000MB DVD:
    Did you even read the article? The theoretical rate for DVD 1x is 1380 KB/s, so 2x is 2760 KB/s and 2.5x is 3450 KB/s.

    In his testing, he burned:

    4.26 GB DVD-R at 1x in 59:13 (1257 KB/s)
    4.21 GB DVD-R at 2x in 29:31 (2492 KB/s)
    4.21 GB DVD+R at 2.5x in 27:58 (2631 KB/s)
    4.25 GB DVD+RW at 2.5x in 22:10 (3351 KB/s)

    So, the effective rates are somewhat less than the theoretical (probably because of extra time to write the TOC or close the disk) but they come fairly close. In any case, it's nowhere near 3 hours.

    Remember, this is a max speed (probably calculated on the outer ring?), chances are that your DVD is going to take longer to burn than optimal estimates.
    That only applies when accessing a drive using CAV, the burning here is done with CLV, so the rate is constant throughout the whole disk.