Drives > Sony Drives > up to 8x

Advantages: It's a Sony, so quality and style are excellent...
Disadvantages: It's a Sony, so it's a bit more expensive...

...most things, claiming (in the Sony documentation) to work with: DVD-R/-R DL/-RW, DVD+R/DVD+R DL/+RW, DVD-ROM, DVD-Video, CD-DA, CD-ROM (XA), CD Extra, Video CD, Photo CD*, CD Text, multi-session (!) I've used the DRX-700UL on some CDR's and some DVD+R's (4.7GB) and have had no problems, no burning or buffer errors (the drive has a 2MB buffer). It can record up to 8.5GB capacity on one Double/ Dual Layer disc, but I just happened to find some DVD+R's ... Read review

Advantages: very small, fast, nice, anaesthetic wise, fast DVD+RW speeds
Disadvantages: USB data handling not too fast, good enought though

♦How I acquired this impressive product ♦ Well, seeing as I do a great deal of video editing, I needed to backup my computer in the case of data loss or due to reformatting my hard drive, loosing all my valuable data, as I also run windows 2000, so that explains the problems with the computer anyway. I already had a CD+RW for my computer, but this one was internal, so I had the problem of carrying it around, well, I couldn’t really, ...
...all my date on to. I wanted a DVD±RW as well so that I could backup large amounts of date, not necessarily very quickly, but at least I could store large videos without splitting them all up. I also wanted to record DVDs for friends and family, legally, that is, by the way. So I looked around for a DVD±RW that was not only external, but also worth the amount of money that I was willing to fork out for it, £200-£300, so I wanted something that would ... Read review

Advantages: User friendly plays various formats
Disadvantages: needs to have a faster write speed

...what you would expect of sony although the headphone do hurt my ears alittle As this is a couple of years old now there are far quicker external writers available. This machine will write at a speed of 4x so it can take around 20 minutes to wrtie a whole cd, but I dont sit and write cds all day so i would only consider this as a minor disadvantage I believe the price was £100, which, as far as external writers go is fairly expensive, but fter all ... Read review

Advantages: High Speed Writing, Writes all formats, Writes Cds too
Disadvantages: Cane be tricky to install if bought OEM

...I decided to buy this Sony 4x DVD REWRITER, which supports all formats - (-R,+R,-RW,+RW and DVD ROM etc) For those of you who don't know what this means, it is just that it supports all the different types of disk - As the future format of DVDs has not really been decided yet. Personally I use DVD-R, as it works in XBOX, PS2, and all DVD players. I bought the DVD writer itself as OEM - Original Equipment Manufacture, which means it comes with no ...
...and 10X for CDRWs. Sony have done a great job of this piece of hardware. If you really want to, you can acquire the FIRMWARE (drivers) for the more expensive models, for free at the sony website. The Writer itself is about £92 from ebuyer.co.uk , but that is OEM so you have to be competent and be happy about opening your pc up and installing it with no instructions (its not really rocket science although). The Boxed version however is a lot more ... Read review

Advantages: ummmmm
Disadvantages: Doesn't work very well, slow, intermitently recognises disks, poor back up service, need I go on?

I ordered my Freecom DVD Recorder LS USB 2.0 after my CD/DVD drive packed up on my 15 month old HP Desktop. I wanted it mainly to load CD ROM and burn DVD's from movies already converted to DVD format on my hard drive. Being that my PC had no disk drive I relied upon this external drive to load the bundled DVD burning software (Roxio 9). This took several days and many attempts. Then I tried burning my first DVD. After taking 3 hours to do a task ... Read review