Plextor PX-716A - DVDRW (dual layer) drive - IDE ( PX-716A/SW )

by Plextor

Product Details

• Item Weight: 3 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B00068S59Y
• Item model number: PX-716A/SW
• Average Customer Review: 2.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: May 2, 2006

Product Description

The PX-716A DVD+-R/RW & CD-R/RW internal E-IDE drive from Plextor offer all the advantages of CD-RW drives along with double layer and dual format capabilities. The PX-716A is also supported by Intelligent Recording technology to enhance recording activities. The drive achives blazing fast 16X CAV performance on recommended 8X DVD+R media, and burns a 4.7GB DVD in less than six minutes. The drive also supports dual-layer DVD media, enabling users to burn up to four hours of high-quality. PoweRec technology is a sophisticated write strategy providing superior quality recording at maximum speed for chosen media Buffer Underrun Proof Technology prevents buffer underrun errors Buffer Memory - 8MB Achieves 16x write performance with recommended 8x DVD+R media Support DVD+RW background format Horizontal or vertical mounting orientation Replaceable black front bezel included Systems Requirements - Pentium 4 1.4GHZ, HDD 800 MB (1 GB free space for copying CD to CD image), 10 GB free space for DVD authoring, RAM 256 MB, Monitor Display Resoution 1024 X 768 at 16-bit color, Windows 2000 or XP Only

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

63 of 75 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars I expected better from Plextor, April 19, 2005

By 

Dave (CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Plextor PX-716A - DVDRW (dual layer) drive - IDE ( PX-716A/SW ) (Personal Computers)

I've owned many optical drives over the years, several of them Plextor. I'd always been happy w/the Plextors, but I never had one fail on me, so I'd never had to deal w/the company. I bought the 716A online (not at Amazon) back in January. That online merchant's policy was that any warranty problems had to be dealt with directly w/Plextor. I didn't think much about that at the time, since I'd always had such good luck w/my Plextors.

Within a week, the 716A I'd purchased began to fail. Within 2 weeks, it would no longer read or write a disk. Even tho this problem w/this particular drive has been pointed out on several forums, Plextor tech support has a very rigid diagnostic routine they insist you perform. Once I'd proved to them that yes, the drive was indeed bad, they gave me a "ticket number" that I had to use to then contact their RMA dept.

I submitted the online form I was told to fill out, and received an RMA # w/a lot of boilerplate rules for returning products. One of the rules was that the customer paid shipping costs to Plextor (Plextor pays them back to the customer). Surely, I thought, since the drive went bad after only a week, and since the company makes such fine products, they would be happy to pick up the drive, since it was so obviously defective.

I was wrong. Not only would they not pay the shipping to them, they would not reply directly to my emails--they just kept sending me the boilerplate rules over and over, no matter how I begged or pleaded in my emails for them to respond. I assume they wanted me to read the part that said the customer pays shipping to, "No Exceptions" (their words).

So, defeated, and holding a useless $130 drive, I reluctantly ponied up the $11 shipping via UPS (the least expensive secure method that can be tracked; Plextor recommends against using U.S. Mail).

From the time of my first email (which had actually gone unanswered) to when I had the replacement drive in my hands, was nearly 2 months.

But wait, it gets better. The replacement drive, which was supposed to be new, has now failed. And more quickly than the first one did, in under a week of regular use. It has failed in the exact same way as the first one.

As Plextor tech "support", and the RMA dept especially, are not very helpful or sympathetic, I have written an email to their Public Relations dept., describing my situation. I have yet to hear back.

You will read many glowing reviews of this drive. And I want to say that, yes, when it worked, it was the fastest DVD drive I've yet used. But from my (admittedly unscientific) survey of user comments on other forums, it appears about 10-20% of these drives may be bad. Or it may just be the twenty or so reviews I read about the problem. Or it could be just one group of drives--both my bad drives had a manufacture date on the sticker of Dec 2004. (Also an oddity: the one I bought in January had a reasonable manufacture date of 12/04, but the one they sent me in March, presumably, should have had a newer date.)

At this moment I am out the $130 for the drive, plus the shipping costs, and I have no doubt that, given their initial attitude, Plextor would want me to pay shipping again to send the second bad drive back. I seriously doubt I'll ever deal w/this company again.

My final recommendation: if you must have this drive, be sure to purchase it from a dealer to whom you can return it in 30 days. Unless you install the drive immediately and torture test it for several days, it could take as long as a month to go bad (if it's going to do that). And then you're stuck paying to have Plextor take it back.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars The waiting game, July 15, 2005

By 

Asia Demorte (Brownsville, Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Plextor PX-716A - DVDRW (dual layer) drive - IDE ( PX-716A/SW ) (Personal Computers)

I recently bought a plextor 716a online (not amazon) back in march of this year. It worked beautifully.. when most of my friends were burning at 4x or even 8x mine was blazing at 10x-16x. Then all good things come to an end. Mine messed up, it wouldn't read write nothing. I called plextor support (they were very nice and helpful) but i had to do this unbelievable self test to let them know how many blinks and what color to determine what was wrong with it. After that i waited about 2 weeks to get the other one (last night to be exact). Man, was i excited to get the "new" one. I say "new" because the date on the thing was nov. 2004 and the original was oct. 2004. You would have thought it would have said june or july 2005. Well installed it. Burned beautifully and now today (one day later actually about 16 hours later) i am calling them up again because it gave out. This time the gentleman told me that the blinks (2 amber ones) meant something that only they know and that it wasn't published in the manual. Why wouldn't it be in the manual. Anyhow, he has arranged for the UPS man (because they only use UPS and this time i dont have to pay) to come by the house and pick it up in the original box (too bad i threw out all the packaging). I should get my "new"/ third one in about 1 1/2 weeks. Man, talk about a waiting game.

If you are interested in buying one be prepared for things to happen... nothing is perfect not even this drive

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars This drive works only for the first month, July 13, 2005

By 

Antonios Fountouris "A. Fountouris" (Greece) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Plextor PX-716A - DVDRW (dual layer) drive - IDE ( PX-716A/SW ) (Personal Computers)

After a month of light usage, the drive started to fail, now it is completely unusable and there is not any way to return it for another drive since I've lost the purchase receipt. Paying 130$ for copying 10 DVD'S is two much. Don't buy it