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Your cart is empty.Lite-On Super AllWrite IHAS124-04 24X SATA DVD+/-RW Dual Layer Drive (Black), Bulk
BTaz
Reviewed in the United States on February 10, 2013
I paid 17 for this. Overall, a good product, especially if you can get it on sale. I have a few issues with it though. One is that it spins up and down then back up again before starting a DVD burn (DVD+R). That puts more wear than necessary on the motor and takes at least an extra 10 seconds to do a burn. Another issue, which may just be a "mine does it but yours may not", is that playing CDs results in the drive spinning at full speed which is loud and not good for the drive or the discs long term. My SONY Optiarc AD-7280S drive doesn't do either of these. I don't play CDs though. The other thing I noticed is that a spindle of SONY DVD+R discs that I have is not recognized properly by this drive. The discs only show as 16x and are greyed out in the speed menu of Nero. They also don't burn properly and are not recognized in DVD players but are readable in the drive. This was the case with the stock firmware 8L08, and the latest firmware 8L0A. My Sony drive and my ASUS DRW-24B1STa drive burn them just fine (though my ASUS tends to spindown towards the end). Other than that this drive is pretty much on par with my ASUS drive. This drive seems just as capable of reading problem discs as my SONY drive and that makes it a good drive. It also does a good job of burning Amazon and RiData DVD+Rs at 16x.Overall, I like my Sony drive more. I paid 18 for that one, but I haven't seen it for that price in a long while. My last Lite-On drive (2004) failed within 5 months (wouldn't recognize discs most of the time). Hopefully, this one will last a lot longer. I had two Pioneer drives that lasted from 2005 and 2007 to within the last year (2012). They still read/rip discs well but no longer burn discs properly. Both of those drives were competively priced at the time and were used regularly for ripping and burning CDs and DVDs so I tend to expect more from my DVD drives.
E. A. Bustos
Reviewed in the United States on January 22, 2013
I have a Dell Inspiron 531S whose DVD drive died. It just wouldn't read discs, and when I ran a test on the drive it failed the test. Rather than buy a more expensive external drive, and since I build computers, I decided to replace the internal DVD drive. Because I wasn't using the computer myself anymore but handing it down, I looked for the most economical drive on Amazon, and found this. It arrived in a regular Amazon box in foam padding; very well protected. I had to look up how to replace the drive in the computer because the design of the computer is not very intuitive (basically, you have to pop off the front strip of the computer after you've removed the sliding side, press the clip on the side of the drive and slide the drive out the front, but make sure you take the screws off the old unit and put them on this unit because they provide the stability for the drive). I put it in, the computer recognized it right away, and I was able to install MS Office on the computer with no problem. It's quite fast (no, I haven't done any speed tests yet), and does what it's supposed to do. Very inexpensive and very easy to install. Remember to keep your old cables as well because this item is only the drive with no cables or anything in the box. It's plug and play so it the Vista computer installed the necessary drivers. I didn't even need to go into the BIOS to make any changes, it was that simple. I highly recommend it!
The Goat
Reviewed in the United States on November 16, 2012
I had to rebuild one of our computers as after a storm it wouldn't come back on... go figure since it was shut down properly. From there I had replaced most of the internals and everything was working except the DVD-RW drive was being picky--- it would work when it felt like it. I looked at the date and it was from 2006. For that I felt it served its time and I had no qualms in replacing it. Since we really do not use it except when I need to do repairs to the system or load program software that is on disc--- I was not willing to break the bank on a replacement. This one also replaced a IDE drive so no more ribbon cable which was nice as it was always a bugger to fold in the case.The only hiccup was in my system configuration. It would persist that the device was not working properly and would not recognize it properly. After a little searching I found out that in Windows 7's registry there were a possibility of four entries that could prevent this from working---- I had one of the four, deleted it, rebooted the system and Voila! it was up and running.I do not fault the drive as it was my computer/ other drive that started the whole problem. This one is definitely faster, quieter, and for the price.... it can't be beat for a DVD-RW drive. On our other computer where I do use the drive quite a bit I am tempted to replace it with one of these as well since I can also ditch the IDE cable.Update 12/2012-- I just setup a new machine and bought another one of these drives. It once again worked very well and installed without a hitch. I have one piece of software that is very particular to install--- for some reason the original disc is hit or miss, but the copy that I made works perfectly. I gave the original a shot and it failed with the install, switched over to the copy and all was fine. Since that has been my only snafu and it has tricked up several other systems/ drives as well, it doesn't bother me at all. I still recommend it and may be in for a third if our one other drive gets to be picky in opening.... needless to say this is a new behavior!
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