Product:
Sony External DRX-510UL

Stats:
Sony DVD+RW/+R/CD
DVD+RW 4x
DVD-RW 2x
DVD+R 4x
DVD-R 4x
DVD-Rom 12x
CD-RW 16x
CD-R 24x
CD-Rom 32x

Interfaces:
i.Link/USB2.0

System Requirements:
Windows PC
Pentium II 400MHz
Windows 98SE or newer
128MB Ram (256MB Ram on WinXP)
1GB Disk Space (up to 4.2 depending on media if doing a DVD -> Drive -> DVD)
IEEE 1394 (i.Link) or USB 2.0
If installing drivers on Win98 must have a current DVD Drive to install drivers from included DVD

Information:
Tested using MyDVD for writing.
Tested using Windows Media Player and PowerDVD for DVD Playback.
Tested using USB1.1
Tested on Windows XP SP1

Rating: 4/5

Review:
We chose to review Sony's External DRX-510UL strictly due to the 4x speed of the DVD+RW and the fact that it was an external drive. Installation of this drive took a whole 3 seconds to plug the wires in. On the Windows XP computer that we tested it on it automatically found the drivers and installed them within 30 seconds.

Our test right involved a simple copy of a set of DVDR's that we had purchased from a BusinessWeek seminar last month so that we could put our original's away so we wouldn't have to spend another $5000 for the set ($300 drive + $40 CD's is a lot cheaper than having to replace a $5000 set if one should get scratched).

During this test the drive had wrote all of the 2.8GB of information for all 4 DVDR's with an average of an hour each. All 4 DVD's ended up copied in an 8 hour period which was quite suprising since it wasn't an On-The-Fly transfer (an On-The-Fly transfer would have taken 4 hours due to not having to copy all data to the drive then burn to the DVD).

The DVD copied flawlessly and played just fine in our DVD Player and PS2 (DVD Video, what more could you want), We'd have tested it on the XBox's DVD Player if we had the playback kit (just in case anyone wants to assist with the next review wink )...

The only thing that I didn't enjoy about the DVD Copying was with the software suite that I was using; generally people like to test a burn before it goes through but I just like to do it and forget it...


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