Sony DRX710UL DVD+R Double Layer External DVD+-RW Drive (16x)

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Paul Gelfand (Brooklyn, NY USA) –

  

I bought this product about a week ago, since I was looking for an external DVD burner to hook up to my laptop (IBM T-30 w/pcmcia firewire card) in peacefulness to consolidate a lot of cd’s that I had lying around.

Out of the Box:
The first thing I noticed was the size of the burner, which is really pretty huge compared to all else on my desk, but with the verticle stand, it’s not a problem. The drive itself looks like a high quality product, Sony even went the extra step of giving it a interpretation end.

Included in the box is a USB cable, and a Firewire cable with a 4 pin connector on one side, and a 6 pin on the other (the back of the drive has both a 6 pin firewire connector, and a 4 pin, so if you only have one type on your notebook, you can just flip the cable around). Btw, Sony calls the firewire cable an “i.LINK” cable for some wits. Also included is a packet with the warranty, and seperate packet for the manuals and software CD.

On the software CD:
Nero Burning Rom 6-SE
InCD 4
Nero Vision Express 2
Nero BackItUp
Nero Showtime

Installation:
The drive is decently plug and play, there are no drivers on the CD at all. Connect it by either the firewire or USB cable and it recognizes it very promptly. With the drive showed up in my notebook, I popped in the software CD and installed the Nero software suite. I’m very pleased that they included Nero, considering it’s one of the best CD/DVD burning programs out there.

Performance:
I went out and bought a generic brand of 4x DVD-R’s to test the drive out, place in Kill Bill Vol 2, and started burning. Even at 4x, the entire process took 15 minutes. I was nervous to try out the Dual Layer feature, so I went out and bought a pack of DVD+R DL’s. These things are not cheap, each one retailing around $10 a disc. With deciding on what to back up, I went to burn it. It took a bit of time, since it’s burning at 2.4x, but it went flawlessly. I was a bit nervous, since I would’ve been annoyed (to say the least) at coastering a $10 disc.

In conclusion, I am extremely satisfied with this product. I can’t find a wits not to give it less than 5 stars. It’s simple to setup, it’s simple to use, and it performs like a dream.

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The apparatus works wonderfully, looks excellent; but people should be aware of a small, potent problem with the software. If you have (say) an internal CD-RW drive, and you’re running Nero for it, this Sony DVD burner comes with its own version of Nero that wipes out your other version. And, this version of Nero will REFUSE to recognize a non-Sony burner of any sort. So, that’s the end of your internal CD-RW drive! I bought this Sony for an office, intending to go it from apparatus to apparatus as needed, but this dreadful feature means I can’t use it that way, because I would end up incapacitating everyone’s CD burners. So, I have to keep it dedicated to a single apparatus. Might as well have bought an internal! What a design flaw, in an if not wonderful device! Whether or not this issue is of immediate concern to you, you really ought to be aware of it before you buy the apparatus.

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Paul (review below) did such a fine job that I only have a small bit to add. First I want to add that my initial experiences with this DVD burner have surpassed all of my expectations. The Nero software they grant is brilliant; the DVD burner is pleasure to use. And FAST too.

I want to mention that Sony has two updated BIOS releases that takes DVD-R writing speeds from 8x to 12x. There are other advances also. And the BIOS update is so simple to do.

(…)

There are two updates. One update (says it is for the 710A but the DRX-710UL has a 710A inside so it applies here) updates media compatibility and improves writing speeds. That update is named 710A_BYX2.EXE.

The second update is for us users that connect to the notebook with a USB cable. That update is FWUPDATE.EXE and it resolves some issues with WinXP SP2 communications on the USB boundary.

I have now done both updates on my burner. I ran FWUPDATE.EXE first, rebooted and then with the USB boundary issues all updated, I ran 710A_BYX2.EXE.

The 710A_BYX2.EXE update paused for what seemed like a minute or two at the 100% progress mark, but just be patient and eventually you should get the “inquiry” message followed by the “update was completed successfully” message and an invitation to reboot.

Upon reboot with the 710A_ByX2.EXE update, WinXP saw my DVD Burner as a new device (again).

All in all, it is pretty slick. But, of course, proceed at your own risk with printing out and carefully subsequent the provided (on the web-site) instructions for each BIOS.

I’ve been burning with Fuji (Taiyo Yuden) 8x DVD +R and -R as well as ProDisc 8X DVD-R and it simply couldn’t be simpler.

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