Hi everyone, Today, we will be unboxing the SilverStone TOB04 9.5mm Slim Optical Blu-Ray Writer. This is yet another Blu-Ray Writer for internal 9.5mm optical drive bays. This drive is able to burn all major optical drive formats, including BDXL discs. Upon opening it, we see it comes with a slim SATA cable that helps us if we choose to use it in a desktop machine if it has a slot for a drive like this, or other compatible 5.25…
Hi everyone, Today, I’ll show you how to update the LiteOn DU-8A5LH firmware. This is important as firmware updates should improve the drive operation, including better reading and burning stability. Recently, I tried to burn a SmartBuy DVD+R DL disc but it failed at the beginning of the 2nd layer. The drive had an older firmware, so I updated it and we’ll see if this improves double layer burning at another post. For now, let’s see the steps to update…
Hi everyone, Today, I’ll show you how to update the Pioneer DVR-XD09 firmware. This is important as firmware updates should improve the drive operation, including better reading and burning stability. This Pioneer DVR-XD09 drive came with the 1.02 firmware. The latest firmware available for this drive is 1.05. To download and update it, we first need to go to Pioneer’s optical drive firmware update download page. We will scroll down until we see the firmware file for our DVR-X09 drive….
Hi everyone, After playing around with the Samsung SE-506 drive as well as the Pioneer DVR-XD09, they can both scan discs. The Samsung SE-506 being a Blu-Ray drive, can also scan those discs. This is great because it’s probably one of the very few slim drives that supports such feature. Unfortunately, the Pioneer DVR-XD09 cannot scan double layer DVDs. It simply stops scanning at the layer break and reports a massive spike of errors at that segment. However, it works…
Hi everyone, Today, we will be burning a PlexDisc DVD+R disc in the LG GP96YB70 external slim drive: This drive supports burning these discs at 4x and 8x. We will be burning it at 8x: This unit supports setting the DVD+R Book Type to DVD-ROM. This is useful as this can improve the disc compatibility with older drives: The drive was able to burn the disc successfully: And verified it correctly: The drive burns the disc in Constant Angular Velocity…
Hi everyone, Today, we will see the Samsung SE-506 optical drive: This is an External Blu-Ray Writer that can burn CDs, DVDs, Blu-Ray and Blu-Ray XL media. I could not find a data sheet with the supported write speeds. This drive is already discontinued. ImgBurn reports that the drive can read and burn all of the popular disc types: This drive is a standard slim tray-loading device: It uses a Micro USB connector: Here, we can see the optical mechanism:…
Hi everyone, Today, we will see the Pioneer DVR-XD09 optical drive: This is an External DVD Writer that can burn the following media: ImgBurn reports that the drive cannot read and burn DVD-RAM, but it also has an issue where it cannot retrieve the buffer size. It also states it does not support Layer Jump Recording which is used when burning double layer DVDs. The product overview page states it supports DVD-RAM, so maybe ImgBurn cannot retrieve this information properly….
Hi everyone, I found out that the LiteOn DS-8A5S optical drive from the external Gear Head DVD Drive supports wiping CD-Rs and DVD+/-R (DL) discs with Lite-On’s SmartErase feature. SmartErase is a feature that some LiteOn drives have where it can destroy the data on CD-Rs and DVD+/-R (DL) discs to safely dispose of them. It works by overwriting the entire disc surface. I first came to use this feature on the Lite-On iHAP422 until I got the Lite-On iHAS524…
Hi everyone, Today, I’ll show 2 scans from the previous post where I burned a PlexDisc DVD+R in the LiteOn DU-8A5LH. These scans are from the LiteOn DS-8A5S and from the newer LG GP96YB70. While the LiteOn doesn’t come as a surprise, the LG does, since most of their drives do not support performing quality scans. As an expansion of the previous post, here are the quality scans: LiteOn DS-8A5S LG GP96YB70 We already saw that this disc was a…
Hi everyone, Today, we will be looking at the LG Ultra Slim Portable Blu-Ray Writer, Model BP50NB40 I brought about a year ago: This is a portable ultra slim CD, DVD and Blu-Ray writer. It can burn BD-R and BD-R DL at up to 6x, BD-R XL (BDXL) at up to 4X, and BD-RE and BD-RE DL at up to 2x. For DVDs, it can burn DVD+/-R and DVD+/-RW at up to 8x, DVD+/-R DL at up to 6x and…