Review: Sony Optical Drive Delivers

A surefire way for system builders to avoid headaches is to install one of the very latest, state-of-the-art optical drives. Not only is it just as easy to install a new drive as it is an older model, but when a system builder installs an outdated drive just to save a few dollars, users will discover it is incompatible with discs such as dual and double layer.

On the other hand, the newest optical drives to hit the market are compatible with all the latest disc formats and their performance far exceeds that of their predecessors. A good example of a state-of-the-art optical drive is Sony Electronics' new DRU-830A internal DVD/CD burner. The drive is based on Sony's 12th generation of optical storage technology and it supports both double- and dual-layer DVD formats. The double-layer format was devised by the DVD+RW Alliance for the plus (+) format, then the DVD Forum devised a standard for the dash format (-) and called it dual layer. These standard formats are referred to as DVD+R DL and DVD-R DL, and the DRU-830A supports both. It also supports plain old CD-R media and everything in between. (Note that DL discs have a capacity of 8.5 Gbytes per side.)

The DRU-830A also offers top-notch performance. It can burn a full DVD's worth of data (4.7 Gbytes) to a DVD+R or DVD-R disc at 18X speed in about 5 minutes. Of course, the recording speed varies depending on the type of media that's being burned. The maximum record speed for both DL formats is 8X, which also is the maximum record speed for rewritable DVD+RW media; it records a bit slower on DVD-RW media at 6X. The drive records at 12X in DVD-RAM mode for data backup. It also records on CD-R media at 48X and on CD-RW media at 32X.

The DRU-830A comes bundled with the Nero 7 software suite, which enables disc burning, authoring and editing video and backing up data. The drive has an ATAPI interface, making it simple to install, and it comes with both black and white faceplates so it coordinates well with any color system.