Digital Trends

Sony DRU-800A

June 13th, 2005 | by Ian Bell

Setup and Use

Sony provides a product guide and an easy fold out quick-guide to help you install the drive. We found both manuals to be well written and easy to follow. Physically installing the drive is a relatively simple process and does not require any special instructions other than making the drive the first one on the IDE channel. Once the drive is installed you will want to run the software CD which comes with the unit. The DRU-800A uses its own setup menu so you can access the software you want easily.

There was one point in time when Sony used to include Sonic CD/DVD writing software, but the last couple drives we have reviewed came with Nero Burning ROM, a software suite we prefer instead. Nero Burning Rom SE is a very feature-rich software suite that comes with Nero Burning Rom SE, NeroVision Express 3, Nero Recode 2, Nero ShowTime 2, INCD 4 and Backitup. If you have an older, paid version of Nero, than you will want to update it to the latest version in order to support this drive's DVD-R DL capabilities. Our version of Nero was 6.6.0.8 for those that are interested.

Nero Burning Rom SE will be the software you will probably use the most for recording CD and data DVDs. NeroVision Express 3 is what you would use for video authoring such as creating VCD, SVCD and DVD's. Nero Recode 2 is a program designed to let you copy unprotected DVD videos onto recordable DVD media. Nero Backitup is a backup program that lets you create an image of your hard drive and record it to DVD media or another computer on your network. InCD2 is Nero's packet writing software that will let you drag and drop files onto the recordable media just as if it was a hard drive. And lastly, Nero Media Player and ShowTime 2 are the audio and video players of the software suite. If you do not currently have a software DVD player, than your dreams have been answered. ShowTime 2 is a good player that supports VCD, SVCD and DVD playback.

The contents of the Sony DRU-800A package

Performance

As can be expected, the DRU-800A is a solid performer. It really excelled in the DVD+R and —R tests. In our DVD+R DL tests, the Samsung TS-H552U proved to be the faster drive, although it can only write to DVD+R DL media, and not DVD—R DL. One thing we noticed is that the DRU-800A had some real trouble writing at the faster speeds on slower rated media. For example, we were not able to write accurately and without errors on 8X rated media at 16X speeds. This is not that big of a deal, but some DVD writers will let you do that, and it's an added perk.

When using the appropriate media, we had no problem burning while browsing the web and doing other tasks, despite the higher CPU usage by the drive. The 800A did not produce any bad discs as long as we used the correct writing speeds. For our tests we used Verbatim and TDK CD and DVD media. For complete results, please click on the performance tab and link located above and below this review.