Customer Reviews

Samsung DVD+RW Optical Drive SH-S223L/BEBS

5 star:		(64)
4 star:		(28)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I recieved this drive very promptly, and in good condition. It was packaged very carefully. This is an OEM drive, but it did come with a copy of Nero 8, which isnt the full version but is still pretty handy. It does not include a SATA cable, but you can pick 1 up from syba (blue transparent 17") here on amazon for $1.30, ive bought 4 of them so far and they are just fine. Drive isn't too loud and works pretty fast.(burns the heck out of my old PATA).Note: Drive isn't marked samsung on the tray, but it is a Toshiba Samsung Storage Tech. which is 51% Toshiba 49% Samsung joint venture. Ive owned these drives as oem's in new comps, and theve always been ok for me.I would reccomend this drive for purchase.

I bought this drive to replace a very old white DVD ROM, the old one wasn't even a burner it was read only and was now in a black case. This is a very good drive, seems well built, the tray moves smoothly and feels solid. I can't comment on the lightscribe function because I haven't used it yet. It arrived well packed, the only thing included at the time I ordered this drive was driver software, including live firmware update and a copy of Nero 8 Essentials. I did not install Nero 8 but if you don't already have burning software this is a good program to receive free. I have used other versions of Nero and I have always been happy with them. No SATA cord or screws, this was not a problem for me. I deducted one star simply because there is no drive activity light on the drive. This may just be the way optical drives are made now but I miss the light. It can be just a little difficult to find the eject button when the entire drive is black and installed in a black case. I'm sure I'll get used to it and maybe I'm being a bit picky. All in all, this is a good, solid, fast drive that seems to handle every disc format except, of course, Blue Ray, and it's at a reasonable price. And don't let the "half height" disignation throw you off, it is a standard size drive that fits a standard 5 1/2 inch drive bay. I may buy another one to replace my last IDE drive which is one of the first DVD burners that came on the market, I still have some of the 1x DVD discs that I bought after purchasing that old burner, so you can imagine how fast the new Samsung seems to be to me.

The specs on this dvd writer are quite good. If you looking for a Lightscribe enabled drive, this one has some of the best specs available as of this review. I pre-ordered one thru Amazon and it was delivered within the promised time frame. Upon receipt, I installed the drive (this unit comes only with a CD of Nero Software and a user guide - No Sata data or power cable) and the unit would not power up. Long story short - defective drive. I tried to contact Samsung customer service for assistance to no avail. Samsung customer service was totally useless. Amazon customer service, on the other hand, was brilliant. They immediately sent out a new drive (even before receiving the defective drive back as a return) and I installed it. Now working like a charm. Amazon provides postage free delivery back to their warehouse. So, in short, a great device if if works as it is supposed to. And if it doesn't work, Amazon stands by its product (unlike Samsung).

I'm not sure if this is meant to be retail or not. The drive comes in it's own brown box (packaged from Samsung, not Amazon) along with some instructions and a copy of Nero. No cables of any sort, but at least I wasn't expecting them. If you are, go looking elsewhere!

As for the drive itself, so far I have nearly no complaints. It can read basically any disk out there (aside from the obvious; Bluray and HD-DVDs). It seems to read disks very quickly. Noise levels are lower than my previous NEC(Sony) drives. I have noticed spin-up times can be a bit slow, causing a bit of system lag, but nothing too bad. Oh, and lets not forget Lightscribe...something I've still not tried, but I'm curious how it'll work!

All in all, I'm very pleased with the drive. As long as you don't need the little extras included in the Retail box, go for this one.

*** about a year later ...
The drive has failed. I hardly ever use it to read or write disks but it's completely dead. First noticed when I was in a bit of a time crunch and was trying to make some nice looking light-scribe disks. They started coming out as a single line across the disk. I then decided to burn them normally and print on the white-faced disks I had, but all my burns were failing. Turns out the drive would no longer read or write any format of disk.

I purchased another one to swap out and that one lasted hardly any time. After accidentally clicking on the drive on my computer and causing it to eject, I realized the thing would not close. It was as if the stop switch was broken and it would continue trying to forcing the tray out.

Both drives I attempted to update the firmware as well as trying them in other systems. They continued to act up. Now, #2 does seem to be working after I popped it open and made sure everything was secured down, but I'm still using an old spare drive I had laying around. I really do miss the Samsung. The few burns I did with it were much more quite than this old HP drive I dug out from dead systems...

I just got the drive today, and installed it. Long story short: it's an OEM drive, as advertised, so it doesn't come with any cables (get yourself a SATA cable, and make sure your power supply has a SATA power connector, or at least a SATA adapter with the regular Molex power plug on the other end).

This drive comes with a CD titled "Samsung DVD Writer", and includes Nero Express Essentials 8.0 (Version 8.3.18.0), and other Nero software like Vision Express Essentials, BackItUp Essentials, ShowTime Essentials, Recode Essentials, InCD Essentials 5 and LightScribe (for the model SH-S223L).

YES, the LightScribe software IS on the CD, but if you choose a "Typical" install, you won't get at it. Here's a TIP (so you don't have to RE-install all the software, like I did, once you find out what needs to be done): Insert CD, run the auto setup (should go right into that, anyway), choose to install the Nero 8 OEM Suite and when you get to the screen asking you to choose between "Typical" and "Custom", choose the "Custom" install. The Samsung website tells about this (but unfortunately no instructions that come with this drive or software tells you). When you see a screen showing an expandable menu tree with icons (they look like hard drive to me), Right-Click on each one and select the option of installing *everything* in all the *sub-folders*. This will make sure the LightScribe gets installed, and anything else you'll need. The only caveat here: make sure you have enough room for the install.

If you do it right (and choose to have an icon on your desktop for these things), you'll see a "LightScribe" icon appear on your desktop.

Then update your Firmware (I downloaded the "ODD Firmware LiveUpdate" from the Samsung site), and if you want the drive to function quietly, be sure to download the "Magic Speed" application. To check your firmware, there is something called "WININQUIRY.EXE" from the Samsung website, too. It will tell you what version is in your drive.

I haven't yet burned a DVD, but the drive seems to function well so far (it read some old CD-RW discs, and was the drive used when I RE-installed my Nero software). At first, it did seem to have some trouble completing a burn to an old 1x-4x CD-RW disc, but I'll see what it does after I get some faster-speed discs. Can't wait to try the LightScribe feature.

I marked everything 4 out of 5 stars, because everything seems to function so far. Just got it today, so who knows. This drive replaces a Plextor SATA drive (755SA) that just never worked right for me, and one I never got to burn a disc on).

I have had numerous burners, burned hundreds upon hundreds of cds and dvds and still could not get this one to work correctly. There is a major compatitbility issue with this drive. The cds I would burn would play fine on my computer but as soon as I put them into a car stereo...No GO!! I tried all my vehicles, and still the same. I switched to a different cd brand and still nothing. As for the lightscribe it worked as it said but since the burn was bad what was the point. I tried the discs at one of my friends houses and what do you know, it burned correctly. I checked all the settings, had the latest firmware for the drive, spent two hours diagnosing the problem and then contacted Amazon and got a return label. Look elsewhere for a drive, burning a cd shouldnt be this dificult.

I installed this drive in my Lenovo Thinkcenter. It fit perfectly in a standard 5.25" drive bay. I don't know why the description says "half height" as it is normal height.

It went in without a hitch. It comes with a lite version of Nero and Lightscribe software. I installed both and was burning CD's and DVD's in no time.

Drive is pretty quiet in my office environment and is quite fast.

I'd definitely buy it again. For the price, this is a great drive.

This drive is compatible with windows 7 64-bit RTM. It comes with Nero 8 Essentials, and you can also pick up a free upgrade to Nero 9 Essentials when you go to google and search for ODD update (click on the link that talks about a free upgrade). Their website states that all drives manufactured after november 2009 should already have it installed, but i bought mine before that.

This drive was straight plug and play, i used the installation CD and everything went well. It gets a little noisy when it spools up, but once it loads up and quiets down you cant even hear it. No cables come with this drive, so it's only good if you are building a new system or you have extra SATA cables lying around. If not, remember to pick up a SATA cable before you finish checking out. I recommend this drive to anyone looking for a decent combo non-bluray drive.

I just Bought two of these drives to replace older ones I also just upgraded to Windows 7 Home from Win xp. The drives worked just fine until I decided to look at the Nero Disk that came with the OEM drives. I ran the disk and a window appeared asking to update the firmwear for Windows 7. I thought it needed to be done so I ran the install, what I did not notice was Samsung sells this same drive But under differant production numbers(BEBS) and these drives need this firmwear update but not this one.(SH-S223L/BEBS) after running the upgrade both drives locked up solid (green run lite on)and that was it dead no way to get them to open, run nothing. I found a way to check this through Samsung and it shows this drive ready for win7 and it explans the bin number check. Thank goodness I bought these from Amazon I explaned what happened and they are swopping me out both drives no problem. Anyway hope this helps.
JMA

Used this in a new computer system. Compared to the other DVD burners this is fast, quiet, easy to use. Previous burners created one in three usable disks. So far I've burned a dozen disks and nothing has failed yet.

Nero software (accompanying disk) is okay, however be aware, installing software Nero slipped in Zynga Social game link and config file in your browser. It's not listed on the DVD as part of the install and you won't have a chance to deselect installing the link. It took me several hours to get rid of it by disabling Java in Firefox. Technically W7 has DVD burning software as part of the OS so Nero isn't really needed, though I thought I'd try it again. It was underhanded of Nero to install a 3rd party configure file without permission.
That aside, this drive is fast and easy to use. Haven't used the dual layer feature yet and I'll update when it happens. If you get this drive,(recommended), toss the software and download latest drivers from Samsung. Avoid Nero's spyware! I would have posted five stars except the enclosed software isn't worth using.