Customer Reviews

LG Electronics GSA-4040B 4x DVD±RW Drive

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Spectacular DVD and CD burning capability at the best price out there. I have both the Sony Sony DRU-510A and the LG Super Multi DVD Writer GSA-4040B, and the only area the LG falls a little back is audio extraction and CD recording, however I purchased the LG GSA-4040b because it is capable of recording in yet another recording format ( dvd RAM ). this baby does it all and at a far better price. This is the shape of DVD burners to come. I love it.

I'm using this drive with Linux (so none of the software issues the other reviews talk about apply anyway) and am very happy with it. cdrecord worked just like with my old burner, and for dvd's growisofs worked without any configuration whatsoever on my part! DVD-RAMs even burn fine even though the man page for growisofs doesn't mention DVD-RAM!

(I'm using kernel 2.4.22 on x86, you may need to load some modules with modconf for your configuration).

(drive firmware flashed to A300)
all formats supported. have not tried the dvd-ram yet though.
burn speed is good. loaded the software/drivers no problems with dma transfers enabled and ASPI layer up to date and installed correctly.
cdr write is rather slow by todays standards. cpu utilization is much higher then my friends pioneer a06 and sony. software is lacking, but for the price complaints are few.

verdict: i like it!

Instalation was pretty quick. The burns are quite good and clean. It's a quiet drive as well.
The reason that It doesn't get a 5 stars is because I think it should have shipped with better software for burning.
This is a good burner and at quite a bargain, anyone looking to buy the Sony dual format burner should look at this.

Some of you are probally confused about this product since some are giving 5 stars and others 1 star. Well i will tell you right now why. Because the burner will destroy DVD's if they have certain file types. The one's giving 5 stars didn't use those file types, or just blame their software. Its not like im using bad software, i've used nero 6 and 7. Those work perfectly with other drives. Don't blame the software, as many reviewers have. The problem lies in the drivers.

It can read the most scratched up disks, it can write cd's perfectly, but it can't write a load of movie files! The only way to get around this is convert the movie file to another format, and if you have to buy software to do that, its already more expensive then better drives. Not to mention the loads of time wasted and lack of quality/space suffered when converting a file.

Treat this as a DVD/CD combo drive. Reads DVD's, Writes and Reads CD's.

Have had lots of fun transfering video I had on my computer. Not real happy with the software that comes with it, BUT I've had far worse. Can't fault the burner for the software.
The burner has performed flawlessly and has burned every format with no problems. I was looking at a more expencive burner, but NOW I'm glad I got this one. For the savings I will find a better program and still come out cheaper than I ever could have by buying a different burner. Love this burner!!!

TechTV (The Screensavers TV show) has rated this multi-format burner right in there with the more expensive Sony brands- It takes a few more seconds to burn a CD, but it is faster burning DVDs (it still takes about 15-20 minutes to burn 3.5GB). I may wait until these burners get a little faster, but if I were in the market for one now, this is the one I'd get!

According to the review on www.tomshardware.com this DVDRW can read old and scratched DVDs and this is absolutely TRUE. But writing skills is amazingly poor. I already exchanged one because smoke was coming out from it. New one damaging during the recording process 40% of DVDs. Nero some times showing funny message. "Focus Tracking Error ...". Validation of recorded disks failing in 99%. It doesn't matter DVD is brand name or generic.

This is a cheap burner and it shows. The drive itself is physically very poorly built, and the bezel comes off easily. Installing it inside the PC is easy, but when you turn on your PC the drive makes some weird noise at first and it's painful to hear. The software driver is a joke and it can easily crash your PC! I've tried on 4 PCs and on two of them the burn ends with an error after 90%, wasting my DVD-R and DVD+Rs. This is a very poor product. Stick with a namebrand like Sony (simply the best) or TDK or the American Memorex.

Last week i updated the driver and it stopped working! I then uninstalled the driver and reinstalled the old driver but it would still not work. Could read discs but would not write at all with "General I/O Error". So i called tech support but there was nobody answering the line. Terrible, terrible.