Tell me crazy, but who would buy a big external DVD burner these days? But I’m obsessed with burn quality, and my current burner, a NEC-35xx internal drive, has been a workhorse ever since I bought it 5 years ago, that I wanted to do a careful research to find a worthy successor. Talking about brands, NEC drives are now replaced by Sony Optiarc. Samsung I don’t trust, since I have a Samsung CD burner that I bought 4 years ago, have rarely used it, and it already started acting crazy, opening and closing on its own like an obsessed demon. Lite-On has built a reputation over the years, so it’s my preferred brand.

I first seriously considered getting the Sony Optiarc DRX-S70U, a sexy slim drive reviewed in details here. But it worries me that it is DVD-Video riplocked, and Sony in my experience has been strictly folowing its own standards so it might get picky on the discs and the discs might not work great on other players. So then I focused entirely on Lite-On. To me the important factors are an external USB drive for use on 2 computers, the ability to set BookType, and a separate power supply. The form factor is not a concern, since I don’t plan to take it with me anywhere. On the other hand I am a bit suspiscious on the slim models, even more so with those that draw power only on the USB channel. To me, in order to get a consistently good burn, you need a solid drive with a stable and adequate power source.

This was the first time I looked closely at the Lite-On line, and boy at first I was confused by their way of naming their products. I finally figured out that their naming convention is in the form of (e/i)HA(X)nnn, and works as follows: The e-prefix is for external, and i-prefix is for internal; the X indicates the connection type, so U must be for USB, S for SATA; the 124 is a plain vanilla burner, 224 adds Lightscribe, iHAx324 adds Smart Erase, and iHAx424 adds Lightscribe and Smart Erase.

Its form factor and its power source might contribute to its unpopularity, in addition to the fact that it’s a new drive that just shipped in Nov 2009.  I didn’t find any technical review on the net for this drive. However with what I could glean from the spec sheets, this looked like a very fast drive and the only one that met all my criteria. I went ahead with the purchase and got a unit that was manufactured in Sept 2009.

The unit is solid, beautiful, and I like to set it vertical with the included stand that is well padded and fits snugly into the slot on the unit.

The installation is simple. Windows 7 x64 lists it as an iHas424 right off the bat.

The enclosed Nero 8 Essentials is useless, since it doesn’t include Nero Burning ROM, and Nero Recode and Vision are Trial 30-day versions. So I popped in my trusty Nero 6.6 and some programs work fine, in spite of the Incompatibility Warnings. Those that work are Nero Burning ROM to burn DVD, and Nero Recode. I tried Burning ROM for make a music CD and it crashed. Nero Vision Express fails to launch. Nero Start Smart can’t launch Burning ROM successfully.

I changed the Bitsetting using CD-DVD Speed app. You can’t change the DVD+R DL but that’s OK because it defaults to DVD-ROM already.

Burning a data DVD-R takes and average of 6:30 minutes (the Acer AR3610 Recovery discs). No vibration, the noise is a soothing hum.                                              

Though this unit is not meant to be a volume driver for Lite-On like their slim lines, I’m glad Lite-On still produces quality burners like this one.