Merry Christmas to Me
I just recently bought myself a nice little X-mas present that I’m quite proud of. A DVD burner! Oh yes, a whole new realm of optical data storage is now at my fingertips. I’ve felt for years that the paltry 700Mb available on a CD-R was paltry and ineffective. 4.3Gb, or better yet 8.5Gb. That sounds more like it.
The drive I purchased is an “I/O Magic” from Office Depot. Normally I would never recommend that one purchase and I/O Magic, because that company just buys other random stuff, re-badges it, and sells it in office supply houses. However, sometimes they buy from a good company and re-badge a good product. In this case, the drive I purchased is actually a BenQ 1620A, which is a high quality and respectable drive.
It burns DVD-R and DVD+R at 16X, DVD-RW and DVD+RW at 4X, CD-R at 40X, and, get this, Double Layer DVD-R at 2.4X. Double layer DVD-Rs are the newest type, which hold a full 8.5Gb, allowing a direct copy of any commercial DVD Video. Excellent.
The best part about this BenQ drive is that they offer firmware upgrades on their website. The latest firmware update raised the Double Layer DVD-R write speed from 2.4X to 4X. Excellent!
If you are looking for one of these drives, check your local Office Depot. The drive is an I/O Magic, and the model number is IDVD16DD. Make sure that it mentions a 2.4X DL DVD-R speed somewhere on the box. I bought mine for $89.99 w/ a $30.00 rebate.
If you want a drive like this, they are available for around 70$ from various online retailers (search Pricewatch for DW1620 to get current prices). If you buy the drive in anything except a BenQ labeled retail box, you have an ‘OEM’ drive, which needs OEM firmware, and if you have a regular BenQ retail box, you need regular firmware.
Both types of firmware can be had at the BenQ firmware page. Drives like mine need the firmware for the DW1620A Generic, and BenQ retail drives need the DW1620 firmware. They are the same firmwares, except that the retail edition gets updated first, and then they move that update to the OEM version. If you want the highest possible firmware, it is possible to use a hacked firmware to downgrade a 1620 OEM to a 1600, and then re-upgrade it to a retail 1620. However, that advanced technique will take some research on your part. Don’t be saddened though, the major updates, giving us the 4X DL DVD-R speed, for instance, are common to both drive types. You don’t really need to be on the bleeding edge.
Wednesday 05 Jan 2005 | Sam | Misc. Technical
I don’t know about other experiences you ahve had with IO magic, but about the best and most reliable cd burner I ever had was one of their rebadges, plus it was super cheap. In the grocery business, it is pretty common for food companies to just use excess capacity to make generic food which they then sell to the grocery stores, but for less money. Do you think the same thing happens with this?
thats some serious storage capacity.