Lite-On LDW-411S DVD±RW


 

 
  Review: Lite-On LDW-411S DVD-Writer 
Reviewer: OC-Freak
Provided by: Lite-On IT
Firmware: FS0F
Manufactured: September 2003

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Lite-On IT was kind enough to send us their dual format DVD-Writer; the Lite-On LDW-411S. We have pretty good knowledge with Lite-On drives, as we have reviewed several of their drives earlier. Lite-On IT is one of the main players in the optical market; Lite-On IT is actually just one part of the large Lite-On company. The Lite-On company produces a lot of different products: keyboards, power supplies and optical drives is just a few of them. But let us concentrate on the Lite-On IT as it's them we are dealing with.

Also thanks to Memorex for providing some of the media used in this review.

Some Lite-On history:

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In 1995 Lite-On gathered some elite scientist 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.

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.

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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 was 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.

If you have read our previous Lite-On review you may already feel familiar with this company information, so let us now take a look at the specifications of this drive:


Drive specifications:


This is the specifications of this drive, found at the Lite-On web page:

4x 4x / 4x 2x + 40x 24x 40x DVD-Dual Drive

Features :

LDW-411S

*

ATAPI/E-IDE Half-Height internal DVD+R / DVD+RW / DVD-R / DVD-RW / DVD-ROM / CD-R / CD-RW / CD-ROM combination drive

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SMART-BURN avoiding Buffer Under Run error, Automatically adjusting writing strategy & running OPC to provide the best burning quality

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SMART-X Smart Monitoring & Adjusting Read-speed Technology for eXtraction

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VAS® to reduce vibration & noise during recording & reading

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Support Fixed Packet, Variable Packet, TAO, SAO, DAO, Raw Mode Burning & Over-Burn

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DVD read compliant: DVD single/dual layer (PTP, OTP), DVD-R(3.9G/4.7G), DVD-R multi-borders, DVD+R, DVD+R multi-sessions, DVD-RW, and DVD+RW

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CD read compliant: CD-DA, CD-ROM, CD-ROM/XA , Photo-CD, Multi-session, Karaoke-CD, Video-CD, CD-I FMV, CD Extra, CD Plus, CD-R , and CD-RW

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Support both 8cm and 12cm disc of CD and DVD family

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Conform to Orange Book: Part 2 CD-R Volume 1, Part 2 CD-R Volume 2 Multi Speed, Part 3 CD-RW Volume 1 (1x, 2x, and 4x), Part 3 CD-RW Volume2: High Speed, Part 3 CD-RW Volume 3: Ultra Speed

*

Supported transfer mode: PIO mode 4, DMA mode 2 and Ultra DMA mode 2

Specifications :

*

DVD Family :

 

Write

 

4x ( 5400KB/sec ) CLV

 

ReWrite

 

DVD+RW

4x ( 5400KB/sec ) CLV

 

DVD-RW

2x ( 2700KB/sec ) CLV

 

Read

 

DVD-ROM

12x ( 16200KB/sec ) maximum by CAV

 

( single layer )

 

DVD-ROM

8x ( 10800KB/sec ) maximum by CAV

 

( dual layer )

 

DVD+/-R/RW

6x(8100KB/sec) maximum by CAV

 

Access time

160 ms

 

*

CD Family :

 

Write

 

CD-R

40x ( 6000KB/sec ) maximum by PCAV

 

ReWrite

 

CD-RW

24x ( 3600KB/sec ) maximum by PCAV in UltraSpeed disc

 

Read

 

40x ( 6000KB/sec ) maximum by CAV

 

Access time

140 ms

 

*

Buffer Size : 2MB

*

PC Required :

 

Pentium 166MHz or faster CPU, 128MB DRAM Required

 

HDD access time should less then 20ms, with a minimum of 100MBytes Free space

*

Support Operating System :

 

Windows 98 / NT4.0 / ME / 2000 / XP

*

MTBF ( Life ) : 70,000 Hours

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S/N Ration : 60dB

*

Environment :

 

Operating : 5C to 45C; Relative Humidity : 15% to 80%

 

Non-Operating : -40C to 60C; Relative Humidity : 15% to 95%

*

Dimension :

 

145 ( W ) x 41.3 ( H ) x 170 ( D ) mm

*

Weight : < 0.9 Kg

*

Voltage Requirements :

 

+5V +/-5% and less than 100 mVp-p ripple voltage

 

+12V +/-5% and less than 200 mVp-p ripple voltage

Specification wise it seems to be a clear winner as few other drives is able to provide such high CD-R/RW Reading/writing speeds and 4X DVD+RW writing speed. Our expectations for this drive is very high due to the fact that our previous Lite-On drives have been very good performers, especially when considering the price of the drives.

In this review we will try to find out how good it really performs by taking it through several extensive tests.


Test machine:


For this review we will be using a computer with the following configuration:

Hardware:

         Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-8KNXP with Intel i875P chipset.
         Processor: Intel Pentium 4 2,8GHz 800MHz FSB with Hyper Threading support.
         RAM: 1Gb PC3500 DDR
         GFX: ATI Radeon 9800 pro
         Sound: SB Audigy 2
         Hard disks: 2 x Seagate Barracuda ATA IV 80Gb in RAID 0

System set-up:

 

The Lite-On LDW-411S was connected as Secondary Master and identified itself as LITE-ON DVDRW LDW-411S. Both autorun and DMA (Direct Memory Access) was enabled for all devices.

Software:

Windows XP professional is installed on the computer along with Service Pack 1 for windows XP. We will be using the following software in this review:

         B's clip v5.38
        
Ahead InCD v4.0.7.2
        
Ahead Nero Burning ROM version 6.0.0.23
        
Ahead Nero CD/DVD Speed v2.10.2
        
Ahead Nero InfoTool v2.07
        
Slysoft CloneCD v4.3.1.7
        
Blindwrite suite v4.5.7
        
Exact Audio Copy v0.95 prebeta 3
        
K-Probe v1.1.26

The bundled programs will be installed and evaluated as well, but may not be used for the performance testing part of this review.

Head on to the next page and find out what the box we got contained…


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