Digital Trends

Sony DRU-530A February 19th, 2004 | by Ian Bell

Once the drive is installed you will want to start the application installation process. Sony ties in all 5 applications through the use of a single menu system which will auto start when you put in the CD. Each application needs to be installed individually, but we see this as a good thing since it will allow you to pick and choose which software you want to use.

Sonic RecordNow is a very simple DVD and CD recording program that also offers backup capabilities. It is not as feature rich as Ahead's Nero or Roxio's Easy CD and DVD Creator programs, but it gets the job done. If you are not very fond of Windows XP's built in packet writing software, Sony includes Sonic DLA program which will allow you to drag and drop files onto your DRU-530A drive (under My Computer) and write directly to the CD or DVD media. When it comes time to author and edit those home movies to be burned to DVD, the included Sonic MyDVD software is a nice touch. While not as feature rich as some of the other DVD authoring programs, it is a solid program that the newcomer will find easy to use. It is very intuitive to use and will give those new to DVD authoring a good base of information.

We would like to point out that besides working with the software Sony packages with the DRU-530A; we also found the drive to be compatible with Nero 6 and Roxio Easy CD & DVD Creator 6 programs.

Before you start burning any sort of media, we highly recommend that you head over to Sony's website and check to make sure that you have the latest firmware installed on the DRU-530A. Firmware is a software update for the drive itself and will usually fix any bugs or problems the drive encounters after production.

Before updating our test drives firmware, we encountered problems with the DRU-530A completing the writing process in Nero 6. We also had problems with the DRU-530A reading from several retail software media, as we did with the Plextor PX-708A before the firmware upgrade. Once we updated our drives firmware, everything worked properly and we encountered no more errors.

Most readers may only care about the drive's speed and we can tell you the DRU-530A is a smoking fast drive. In our tests we use Nero Drive Speed, SiSoftware Sandra, Nero 6 and Easy CD & DVD Creator to benchmark real world performance. Between each test, our hard drive was defragged and our system rebooted. Because having multiple CD/DVD writing programs installed simultaneously can skew results, we installed Nero 6 and Easy CD and DVD Creator separately and apart from each other.

In our CD and DVD+R tests, the DRU-530A trailed every so slightly behind the current speed champion, the Plextor PX-708A drive, but was able to beat out the Plextor in our packet writing and Audio CD writing tests as well as the DVD-R tests. In our Digital Audio Extraction tests, the DRU-530A was right on par with the HP DVD 400i drive which to be honest is not a good thing. But aside from the DAE tests, the DRU-530A proved to be a very fast drive. For complete benchmarking results please click on the performance tab and link located above and below this review.

After the firmware update, we experienced no problems with our test drive reading from certain media nor did we experience any buffer underruns or write errors throughout the testing process. We were also able to surf the web and do other small tasks without any noticeable slow down during the writing process. The DRU-530A proved to be as reliable as it is fast.

Several competing products, such as the Plextor PX-708A, are able to write 8X speeds to 4X media. In our tests, this was not possbile with the Sony DRU-530A. With it still being hard to find 8X recordable DVD media, this may be a concern for some users.

Conclusion

Sony's DRU-530A 8X DVD writer improves upon its predecessor the DRU-510A in write speeds and offers some of the fastest write times we have seen to date, coming in a close second behind Plextor's PX-708A drive in most tests. What the DRU-530A has going for it is a solid software package and a very competitive price.

We would like to have seen Apple compatibility, headphone and volume controls on the front of the drive, and some blank recordable media to polish off the overall package. But for overall reliability and speed the Sony DRU-530A is among the top of its class.