Customer Reviews

Memorex 8x Internal Dual Format DVD±RW Drive, 32023269

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

 

 

Got this burner on Friday and I have to say I am quite pleased. I already had Nero Ultra, so there was need for the OEM version (they finally put almost all the former "extras"--excepting unlimited MP3 creation--like Dolby encoding (little things like that) that used to double the price. So I can't give any comment on the Nero version so included.

but the burner is solid. No coasters (knock on wood) of either kind. It installed easily. XP recognized it instantly without any "reactivation" required. (I've heard people complain about this but it's never happened to me and this VAIO is six months old.) True Plug n' Play. Something Apple still has trouble with. My VAIO has grey covers which fit over both 5 3/4" slots so the bezel color is irrelevant to me (but I can see if you've got a beige box how it would clash).

As for some of the complaints mentioned, including Joe Turner, I haven't noticed any problems as he has. The burner readily ids any disc (CD or Dvd-x) and displays its name in My Computer. I am running a P4 2.8 dual proc so that might have something do with it. If you're system is older or perhaps you don't have DMA activated, it might take longer for the disk info to hit the processor. In other words, if you're machine is PII 450 with 256MB of 133 SDRAM, yeah, NERO is gonna run slow and the buffering is going to slow everything else down. With dual 2.8 GHz processor cores (the P4 HT), it ain't a problem.

As for the "pokey" speeds for CD writing, I coped, using CDClone, an entire CD (Rush's "Power Windows" which I bought, egads, almost twenty years ago, but it was starting to show "eaten" away spots...so much for CDs lasting a century!), drive to drive (the Vaio came with a Pioneer 106D, which while on the slow side itself, I moved down to slot 2, replacing the ASUS CD-ROM drive the 'puter came with) is less than 4 minutes. I don't know why anyone would need to burn an entire CD in less than for minutes. Maybe there's somebody, but I can't see any real difference.

Other than, the drive works great and I would reccommend it to anyone. I haven't had the chance to get any 8x DVD media. I'd already bought a large quantity of DVD+Rs 4X's and those have to be used before I buy the 8x discs. Besides, they are little pricey right now; too pricey just to be able to say, "Hey I backed up a whole movie in 7 minutes, cool, hunh?"

Sure the new Sony I saw the shelves at Fry's will burn CDs at 40x speed. But in my book that ain't worth the extra hundred the Sony will cost you. Plus word of mouth on Sony optical drives--in my years in the industry--not very good and the reviews here on Amazon seem to indicate it hasn't got much better.

But if you're looking for a solid drive, good burning software (that having been said, if you've already got a good burning package that you're comfortable with, I'd leave it alone; Nero includes a lot of stuff that, while not exactly 'bloatware' in the classic Micro$oftian sense, isn't really useful to the average consumer who wants to burn movies of the grandkids, make perfectly legal--see 321 decision by Judge Susan Illston--backup copies of DVDs you own; but if you are into authoring your own DVDs or Divx (Can TVs display MPEG-4 video straight from the video card?), then it's got everything you need; also, it's burning engine is excellent and is required if you want DVDShrink to burn the discs it transcodes for you) and don't need the fatest car on the block--so to speak--then this solid optical drive's features and price point make it a good choice.

I deduct only one star for the inclusion of a stripped down version of Nero instead of the Ultra Package; or, failing that, an upgrade coupon for the "maxi-big" version, to quote Jar-Jar Binks. Odd that Ahead or Memorex would miss the "upsale" opportunity. In any event, A-.

I bought mine thinking "what a deal!" -- as usual, you get what you pay for. Mine installed flawlessly and looked sexy, but that is the only reason why I am giving it 1 star. I burned 8 "coasters" (both DVD-R and DVD+R) at various speeds (4x, 6x, 8x, 16x) but I was never able to record a single good disc. The bundled software (Nero) was either recording the discs without reporting problems (only to find out later that they had tons of errors on them), or it was simply stalling at some point, randomly (2%, 3%, 54%, 75%). I have a 5400rpm hard drive, 256Mb of RAM, and a 1Ghz processor. All my other applications were closed during the burning sessions. Excuse me, but that should be enough for a DVD burning process. If it's not, they haven't gotten it right yet... I took the drive back after 4 days of repeated, frustrating failures, and I spent the extra twenty bucks to get me a (roughly equivalent) Sony double-layer DVD burner, which apparently works a lot better (burned one DVD so far, tested it thoroughly afterwards -- no errors. Bravos Sony; Memorex please go back to the drawing board). Hope this helps.

I searched and searched for a burner that would fit my budget and also have some of the bells and whistles I wanted in a DVD Burner. As far as $$$ goes this thing is a great deal, at this time I don't think you can find a better deal on a Multi-format name brand DVD Burner.

I use it in conjuction with DVD Xcopy (non rf version) and DVD Shrink and it works great. I only have two complaints

1) Slow CD Writing Speeds 24X
2) Only comes in black so it doensn't match my Beige PC case.

Problem #1 is easy enough to fix. For a small price around $50 you can pick up a 52X CD Burner DVD player combo. This will allow you to have a fast CD Burner on your system and a DVD player so you won't have to switch out the DVD your copying. You can just put the DVD in one drive and the Blank in your burner and walk away. No need to watch and wait then switch.

Also works well with all DVD-R Media I've used. Memorex 4X disks, Imation 2X Disks and Verbatim Digital Movie 4X Disks.

I bought the drive mainly because of the Nero software. Recently began using 8X DVD-R Memorex media but drive does not burn at 8X to DVD-R. Although box and booklet cover state it does, page seven in the instructions states only 4X on DVD-R media. It's very disingenuous of Memorex to call this drive a "True 8X."

Installation was pretty easy and the software bundle is good. Writing DVDs has worked successfully for DVD+R and DVD-R - no coasters! One downside is the fastest write speed for CDs is 24x.

I'm running windows XP Pro on a Dell 8300 and ever since installing this drive I get weird freezes that require a hard reboot but never when burning. I also get freezes at the login screen when there are any disks in the drive.

It turns out that the freezes are cause by Nero (the bundled software) which doesn't install well over other versions of Nero, nor does it update well when you download updates from Nero.

The way to solve the problems is to do a 100% clean install by removing every last bit of an older version of Nero. This can be accomplished by using the "clean" tools that Nero provides on their website.

I needed to replace the DVD+RW that came with my HP 793. I have DVD-RW on other computers, so I am happy with a DVD+/-RW. I needed to change a jumper, but the directions were clear and the replaced drive confirmed the instructions, so that was no problem. The unit slid into the slot, XP Home recognized it and I was able to back up the computer on 2 DVD+RWs using BackUpMyPC. So far I have not used any of the software that came with the drive. No problems so far.

I bought this drive today to give my Mirror Drive Door powermac dvd burning capability. I have a combo drive in the first bay set as the master and pretty easily followed the instructions to install the memorex drive. It worked first time, but I had to take a knife and trim very slightly the corners of the front of the tray (not hard with a sharp knife) so it could fit through the mac's case. OS X 10.4.1 recognizes the drive as a beefed up superdrive essentially and uses alt+eject as the keystroke to open and close it as well as adding a taskbar item. DVD+Rs (8x memorex) can write in about 6 minutes... I haven't tested any other formats.

Memorex doesn't list the drive as mac-compatible simply to avoid having to handle mac-specific tech problems, not because it doesn't work. any internal ide drive should work.

As for the bundled Nero software, that's the only coaster this drive has created thus far.

For the price, you can't beat it. I really could care less about the speed. I just want dependability, and this inboard unit delivers. Easy to install, just take the face off your pc, slide it in, plug in the IDE and power, two screws, and that's it. (...)

No more coasters, Just leave out the nero software, it seems to slow down my applications, but none frezzes, other than that perfect burner!!!! Wow!

At first glance, this dual format DVD drive will give you the biggest bang for the buck. Install is easy and bundled software plentiful. However, this drive isn't perfect compared to the CD-RW drive that I replaced. My only complaint is speed.

When you drop a CD or DVD disk into the drive, it takes a long time to identify what kind of CD or DVD media is in the drive. More importantly. the DVD and CD write speeds are pokey at best (fastest write speed for CD is only 24x). When I install software from CDs, it seems to crawl.

While this may not be an issue for most casual users, my rationalization for purchasing a DVD writable drive was to whittle away the huge pile of CD-Rs I have sitting around. I simply wanted to load the CD-Rs and copy them onto DVD, allowing me to throw away 4 or 5 CDs for every on DVD-R I made.

No problem, until you take into consideration about the time involved in identifying, reading, and copying files to and from the drive.

Still, the drive works as advertised, and I haven't yet experienced a buffer overrun or underrun (no more coasters). Recommended.