Update (06.05.04) - After a year and a half of faithful service, my DRU-500a stopped functioning this past May. She was replaced with an NEC 8x DVD+-R. Rest in peace, my burning friend. Rest in peace.
As of now (and probably for a while), this is the
mack daddy of
DVD-R. The
Sony DRU-500a is a
burner that not only can burn
DVDs, but supports all of the DVD-recordable formats. When Sony looked at the two major formats,
Plus (
DVD+R,
DVD+RW and
Minus (
DVD-R,
DVD-RW, they decided that rather than choose one and alienate a different crowd for any reason, their latest burner would support both. Hence, the
DRU-500a was spawned as the world's first DVD+/-RW burner, and is so popular that it recieved
CNet's
Editor's Choice award.
Write Speeds
- DVD-R (4x/1x)
- DVD-RW (2x/1x)
- DVD+R (2.4x)
- DVD+RW (2.4x)
- CD-R (24x max)
- CD-RW (10x/4x)
The drive can also read DVD-ROM at 8x max, and CD-ROM at 32x.
Requirements: Pentium II 400MHz (MyDVD: Pentium III 600MHz] or faster, Windows 98SE/2000Pro/ME/XPHome or Pro, 128MB (Windows XP: 256MB) RAM, 1GB (MyDVD: 10GB) free HDD space.
Included Software: Veritas RecordNow, Sonic MyDVD, Showbiz, Veritas SimpleBackup, PowerDVD XP, MusicMatch
Though the drive can initially burn DVD+ media at 2.4x, a free firmware update upgrades that speed to a whopping 4x, and is available at http://sony.storagesupport.com/freeupgrade/
This model is now obselete, as Sony released the DRU-500AX. It requires no firmware upgrade for the full 4x speeds, and otherwise is essentially the same burner.