Plextor PX-716SA DVD+\-RW Dual LayerSerial ATA Drive

by Plextor

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 3.2 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B0006OIT44
• Item model number: PX-716SA/SW
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #123,022 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: November 21, 2004

Product Description

The PX-716SA DVD+-R/RW & CD-R/RW internal Serial ATA drive from Plextor offer all the advantages of CD-RW drives along with double layer and dual format capabilities. The PX-716SA 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 98SE, Me, 2000 or XP

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars One of the Few SATA DVD Writers Around, May 19, 2005

By 

David A. Lessnau (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Plextor PX-716SA DVD+\-RW Dual LayerSerial ATA Drive (Personal Computers)

As far as I can tell, Plextor seems to be the only company making SATA DVD writers. This PX-716SA, and its PX-712SA little brother are the only options I know of. I don't know why other companies don't make these writers with SATA connections. It's not the data transfer speed that I'm interested in (irrelevant for these devices). It's just the convenience of those small SATA data connectors (that and the ability to turn off the PATA side of my disk controller). The only thing that worries me about the 716SA is the lack of a digital audio out SPDIF connector. That connector is used to directly transfer digital audio from CDs to the sound card without having to go through the system bus. Without it, the system has to handle the load. I don't know if will be a problem since I hardly ever use that function. But, still, it worries me. Time will tell.

Update: After using the drive for a while to play music CDs, I'll have to say that the lack of that SPDIF connector makes no difference: the music plays just fine.

For those interested, I installed the drive as follows into my XP SP2 system:

- Important first steps: I copied the serial number from the top of the drive and then backed up all my data.
- To ensure no problems with software, I uninstalled my CD/DVD writing software (Ahead Nero Burning ROM 5.5.10.56) from Start | Control Panel | Add or Remove Programs. It wasn't necessary, but I then rebooted.
- For the hardware, I turned off the computer, opened it up, disconnected my existing CD drive from power, sound card, and IDE port. I then unscrewed and removed the drive.
- To add the new drive, I used the provided power cable adapter to convert a 4-pin power lead to the SATA 15-pin lead and plugged that into the drive (it's keyed so it only goes in one way). I used the provided 7-pin SATA interface cable to connect the drive to the second SATA interface (also keyed) on my motherboard (MSI 865PE-Neo2-FIS2R). Using the four provided screws, I screwed the drive into my computer case and closed everything up.
- When I started the computer, the first thing I did was press the DELETE key to enter its AMI BIOS setup. Since I no longer used a PATA drive, I went to Ingegrated Peripherals | On-Chip IDE Configuration and changed the ATA Configuration from "P-ATA + S-ATA" to "S-ATA only" and the On-Chip ATA(s) Operate Mode from "Legacy Mode" to "Native Mode" (possible because XP natively supports the interface). Everything else stayed the same. I did a Save & Exit and let the computer boot into Windows.
- I expected Windows to tell me it had found new hardware. That didn't happen. I went to Start | Control Panel | System | Hardware | Device Manager and saw that the new drive was there (labeled as a PX-716A (not SA)). It also appeared to be running version 1.07 firmware. Plextor's site has 1.08 firmware, so I downloaded and installed it (that software confirmed the drive had 1.07 firmware). Afterward, I had to reboot.
- After booting, I put the provided DVD into the drive and, from its menu, registered the software (you need the serial number from the top of the drive (it was also on my packing slip and on the box)).
- According to that menu, the PlexTools Professional software was 2.17. Plextor's site has version 2.23, so I downloaded and tried to install it. It wanted a previous version to update. So, I cancelled that installation and installed what came on the DVD (which turned out to be 2.20, not 2.17). I rebooted and installed the 2.23 update. Again, I had to reboot afterward.
- The drive comes with Roxio's Easy Media Creator 7 Basic software (which does all kinds of DVD authoring stuff I don't need) and DVDMax Player 2 (which I might use later). I didn't bother installing them. I just re-installed my Nero Burning ROM 5.5.10.56 and did a couple of backups. I only had some 8x single-layer DVD media on hand, so I could "only" back up 4.7 GB at half the speed the drive is capable of. But, that worked fine. At some point, I'll try some 16x media (for speed) and some double-layer media (for capacity -- 8.5 GB).

So far, I'm very pleased with the drive. I rate it as four stars out of five. If it had that SPDIF connector and a less "bloated" CD/DVD writing software package, I'd probably give it five stars out of five.

Update 2: After reading through the PDFs that came with this drive, I found that I was mistaken about the tools provided. I was under the impression that the PlexTools software was just a utility to set various drive settings. It turns out that it also provides CD/DVD playing/extracting/writing/copying tools. As such, I really don't need my Nero software: I can use PlexTools instead. Because of this, I'd increase my rating from four stars up to five stars. Unfortunately, Amazon won't let me edit the actual star rating of this review. So, even though this review shows four stars, it really should be FIVE STARS *****.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Four months and a dead drive....Plextor Quality?, January 11, 2007

By 

T. J. Pollock (Sarasota, FL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Plextor PX-716SA DVD+\-RW Dual LayerSerial ATA Drive (Personal Computers)

I installed this drive in a small form factor pc that I built in September. I've burned less than thirty CD/DVD's since and now the drive refuses to read or write any disks. I have always heard about the quality of the Plextor drives so what a disappointment this one is. Plextor customer service responded quickly to my email and suggested the cause was bad media and that I should use only media that Plextor had tested. I reviewed their approved media and found the media I was using was listed there. To make sure I didn't have a bad batch of DVD+R's I tried several of them in my HP laptop where they worked just fine. I wrote back to Plextor with more information about the drive, how I updated the firmware to the latest version and when that didn't work tried several earlier versions of the firmware to see if there was a compatibility issue.....nothing worked. Plextor suggested testing the drive with it's on-board testing feature which required disassembling the pc and detaching the SATA cable. The drive test failed. A quick review of the pc hardware forums revealed that this is a problematic drive and I recommend a careful reading of the reviews of this and other Plextor drives before paying a premium price for this product.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Serial ATA dvd burner, May 3, 2006

By 

Gerard (California, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Plextor PX-716SA DVD+\-RW Dual LayerSerial ATA Drive (Personal Computers)

I've been using the Plextor PX-716SA for a little over a year already. Burnt many cdrs, cd-rws, dvds, and dvd+rws discs without any problems. Always burns at a fast, consistent rate. This is the only optical drive I have on my computer so it has no problems reading any discs that I insert too. It's also quiet when read discs inserted into it and burning discs compared to other optical drives I've used in the past. The original drive I had did die on me a couple of months ago, but Plextor's tech support was helpful when I needed to get a replacement drive under warranty.