LiteOn LTR-52246S


 




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Go to Lite-On website Review: Lite-On LTR-52246S
Reviewer: Alexnoe
Provided by:
Lite-On
IT

Firmware: version 6S02

About Lite-On IT:

In 1995 Lite-On gathered some
elite scientists and engineers from ITRI (Industrial Technology Research
Institute) to start an optical storage research and manufacturing business in
Taiwan. Currently they have over 130 engineers with Master & Ph. D. degrees
in their Research & Development team, that are dedicated to the development
of their patented anti-vibration mechanical design, advanced circuit design,
firmware programming & performance tuning. The Research & Development
team achievement is a key factor that has ensured their success in product
development.

In 1997, Lite-On established a
large manufacturing facility in China enabling them to provide optimum OEM/ODM
support to all 1st-Tier PC makers, which further demonstrated their success in
the worldwide Optical drive market. Today, they are among top-3 optical drive
manufacturer worldwide, mostly due to attractive pricing and quality filled
products, along with large OEM contracts. They have also received top brand name
recognition in many regions. These achievements, plus superb management visions
and planning, enabled them to continue their growth and profit even at times
when the optical drive market experienced "price-wars" and many optical drive
manufacturers were forced out.

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In 1999, they created LITE-ON
Information Technology Corporation, another proud member of the Lite-On Group,
to concentrate on developing and manufacturing optical drives to stay strong in
the storage business. They are going to carry on the tradition of developing
optical drives to expand their research and manufacturing capacity to new
generations of products such as DVD drives, High speed CD-RW drives and COMBO
drives to stay strong in both the retail and OEM/ODM market.

At 9th July 2001 Lite-On IT
signed a co-operation contract with JVC, a famous Japanese electrical company,
to be in alliance with each other. Two new companies were established. One is
the optical drives manufacturing sales company, named as JVC LITE-ON IT
Manufacturing & Sales, Limited (JLMS), the other is pick-up head developing
& manufacturing company.

JVC is a pioneer in development
of key components of optical drives and consumer electronics as well. Lite-On IT
is excellent in volume manufacturing and developing, also skilled in IT
industry. That kind of strategic alliance would benefit both companies.

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LiteOn CD-RW drives are very
famous nowadays, since they are not only pretty cheap, but also have proven that
"you get what you pay for" is not true in some cases. But is the drive as good
as expected? How fast is 52x writing actually? Will you notice the difference
compared to 48x at all? And what about 24x rewriting?

Speed is not the only thing
which matters of course. So how does the drive perform with different brands of
media? Does it handle protected audio discs? Which copy protections can be
circumvented? Does it feature major improvements over former LiteOn CD writers,
besides increased speed? Is 52x certified media required for 52x writing? Is it
worth the extra money, compared to a 48x writer? And, last but not least: How
does it compare to Plextor drives?

These are the questions this
review is going to answer, and hopefully helps you to decide which CD writer you
want to have.

Test machine:

  • OS: Windows 2000 Professional, Service Pack 3
  • Mainboard: Asus P4B533-E
  • CPU: Pentium 4, clock speed 2900 MHz
  • Memory: 1 piece of 512 MB DDR-266
  • GFX: Geforce 2 GTS
  • Hard discs: 2x80 GB (WD800BB) as Raid-0 (Promise
    FastTrak 100TX2)
  • USB 2.0 / Firewire: onboard controllers
  • ATAPI Drives:
    • Prim. Master: LiteOn LTR 48125W (UDMA 33)
    • Sec. Master: Pioneer DVR-A03 (MW-DMA)
    • Sec. Slave: LiteOn LTR 52246S (UDMA 33)
    • Onboard UDMA controller: Toshiba SD-M1502 (UDMA 33)

The LiteOn drive has been
attached as secondary slave, and shares one IDE channel with another drive which
does not support UDMA, but only MW-DMA. After booting windows, the drive was
detected automatically, and UDMA was enabled without a further reboot. Autorun
has been disabled.

Used software:

Now
let's look at the package...


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