ASUS DVD RW

This month we tested another DVD-RW drive, this time from ASUS. The drive supports the DVD-R and DVD-RW formats only, unlike the Sony drive we reviewed earlier (page 133, PCQuest June 2003), which could read and write both ‘-‘ and ‘+’ formats. The rated speed of this drive is, in the order of write-rewrite-read, 4X-2X-8X for DVD and 16X-8X-32X for CDs.

Compared to the Sony DVD-Writer, though this one has a higher DVD-R speed (4X against 2X), it loses out on the CD-R speed (16X against 24X). Of course, its CD-burning speed is a third of today’s

CD-ReWriters.

Writing 4.3 GB of data on a DVD-R disk 14:38 mins, formatting the DVD-RW took 28:56 and the average throughput of the drive was 2.48 MB/sec. On the other hand in writing CDs it took 5:12 mins to copy data from the HDD, 5:16 mins to copy audio from the HDD, 5:20 mins to copy data from a CD and 5:34 mins to copy audio from a CD. Formatting the CD-RW took 11.08 mins and the throughput was 0.7 MBps.On the software front, it comes with Nero Express and InCD for writing CDs and DVDs and a bunch of other software from Cyberlink on another CD. This CD contains Powerdirector Pro for video editing, MediaShow SE for making presentations etc and Asus DVD XP for playing

DVDs.

The drive supports only the DVD-R and DVD-RW formats, which are more widely used. So, unless you need to burn DVDs in the + formats, this drive is a good buy.

S N A P S H O T
Price	:	Rs 22,125
Key Specs	:	Fast DVD writing, burns in DVD-R and DVD-RW formats
Contact	:	Rashi Peripherals, Mumbai.
Tel	:	11928221012.
E-mail	:	ho@rptechindia.com

Geetaj Channana