Hi All, I’m new to this site and thought you could help answer a couple of questions about the drive that came with my Dell 518 tower. It came with the following cd rom drive. HL-DT-ST dvd±rw gh30n ATA drive
Could someone explain what all the letters before the dvd mean. Is ATA a brand name? also could someone explain the difference between a dvd- rw and a dvd+rw. I know mine can use both but I’m not sure which type of disk to buy. (or if it even matters) Thanks
Steve
[QUOTE=sh9168;2302214]Hi All, I’m new to this site and thought you could help answer a couple of questions about the drive that came with my Dell 518 tower. It came with the following cd rom drive. [B]HL-DT-ST dvd±rw gh30n ATA drive[/B]
Could someone explain what all the letters before the dvd mean. Is ATA a brand name? also could someone explain the difference between a dvd- rw and a dvd+rw. I know mine can use both but I’m not sure which type of disk to buy. (or if it even matters) Thanks
Steve[/QUOTE]
For dvd media type check this link
Also RW isn’t good for burning unless your using for burning test only. If you plan to burn get DVD+R media cause you can booktype it to DVD-ROM for standalone player compatibility. ATA is the burner interface just like your HDD the new standard is Sata but you probably have still ATA aka IDE or PATA all three are reference to the same type of connector just depends on whom uses. Have you looked at the manufacture site they might have more info about what each of those abbreviation mean.
Thanks for the qick responds and info. Would you or anyone else be able to explain what the HL - DT -ST mean? Thanks
The HL-DT-ST are simply part of the model name. It does indicate that this particular drive is made by the LG corporation. Many of the drives sold to the big manufacturers have naming schemes that differ from what you can buy at retail, so this drive may only show up in Dell computers. The firmware within it is almost certainly Dell’s, and in the future, if you want to upgrade the firmware, you would have to look at the Dell support site.
This drive uses a SATA interface by the way. Dell has gone entirely to SATA optical and hard drives.
HL-DT-ST = Hitachi LG Data Technologies Storage Technology or something like that; gh30n is the model number of your drive; the ‘h’ I think denotes it as an internal drive c.f. the ‘e’ in the model number in my signature.
Sláinte
midders