Installation is as simple as connecting the USB cable and plugging in the power and you are ready to go. There is a blue LED on the front that lights up during drive activity.

Installing the included software is as simple as popping in the disc and clicking a few buttons and you are good to go.

While the included software will satisfy all of your needs, for testing purposes I am going to use Nero CD/DVD Speed for testing, version 4.7.0.0. The following system was used for testing:

CPU: Intel E4300
MB: Gigabyte P35-DS3R
RAM: G.Skill 4GB PC6400 F2-6400CL4D-4GBHK
Video: Sapphire Radeon HD4550 512MB
PSU: Antec Earthwatts 430W
HD: Seagate 1TB SATA
Cases: Thermaltake DH101
OS: Microsoft Windows XP w SP3

The first test will be burning on a Phillips 16X DVD-R.

As you can see it is a nice steady climb throughout to 16x speeds. The buffer remained close to 100% the whole time. The disc was written in just under 5-1/2 minutes.

Benchmark results look good as well, with both random and full access times coming in under the listed specs of 150ms and 250ms respectively.

With quite a few PI errors and failures the disc received a quality score of 48 out of 100, which is kind of low. A perfect surface scan shows that it isn’t do due a scratched disc.

Next up I threw in a Memorex 16x DVD+R disc and ran it through the tests.

Results nearly mirror the results from the Phillips disc with a nice steady arc throughout the burn process. Again the disc was burned in just under 5-1/2 minutes.

Benchmark results also look good with random and full access times coming in under the advertised specs.

Disc quality came in a bit better on the DVD+R disc at 70 out of 100. Not quite up to what we would hope, but still a good readable disc that has not shown any errors. PI failures dropped quite a bit and another good surface scan.

For Blu-Ray testing I ran it through the benchmark test using the Dark Knight movie. Read speeds didn’t quite match the 6x listed and topped out just over 4x. Random access came in well under the 250ms advertised speed at 89ms.

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