Product Description

Looking for maximum burning performance coupled with award winning software at a great price? Sony's new DRU-540A is the drive for you. Burn DVD+R discs at 12X maximum speed on certified 8X DVD+R media. DVD-R discs are burned at 8X maximum, and DVD+RW discs are burned at 4X maximum. CD-R and CD-RW discs are burned at 40X and 24X maximum, respectively. Combine this performance with award winning Nero software suite and you have an ideal all-in-one DVD burner. Now burning your home movies, digital pictures, music, and data onto DVD and CD is faster and more convenient than ever. Internal EIDE/ATAPI interface drive is easy to install and can take the place of an existing CD-RW or CD-ROM/DVD-ROM drive. Choose the brand that invented dual format burners, and still does it best.

Product Details

• Brand: Sony
• Model: DRU540A
• Dimensions: 4.00 pounds

Features

• 8x DVD-R
• 12x DVD+R
• 4x DVD+RW
• 4x DVD-R
• 12x DVD (read)

From the Manufacturer
Sony's ultra-high-performance DRU-540A dual-RW internal DVD burner brings 12x maximum recording speed with certified 8x DVD+R media--allowing for a full, write-once disc to be recorded in approximately 6 minutes--along with support for all the popular formats in a single drive: DVD+R and DVD+RW, DVD-R and DVD-RW, as well as CD-R and CD-RW. No need to have a second high-performance CD-RW drive in your system, as the DRU-540A burns CD-Rs at up to 40x maximum.

The internal DRU-540A dual-format DVD burner is ideal for those who want faster DVD burning speeds coupled with a feature-rich software suite, at an affordable price. Consumers will benefit from the faster speed for their video and audio projects, while business users will appreciate increased data backup performance.

The 12x drive offers a high level of media compatibility, since it also supports 8x DVD-R and 4x DVD-RW/DVD+RW burning. For easy integration into a desktop computer or server, the DRU-540A drive comes equipped with an ATAPI interface.

The DRU-540A is Sony's sixth-generation dual-RW DVD burner. Sony's DRU-540A comes bundled with DVD video authoring software, as well as with DVD/CD burning software for creating data, music, and video DVDs and CDs. The full-featured Nero software suite also includes packet-writing software for users to easily record files and folders by dragging them to the appropriate icon on their hard drive.

All tasks and applications are accessible via the unique Nero StartSmart launcher, which serves as the drive's ultimate command center, giving the user one-click access to all programs in the package. The software suite includes:

• Ahead Nero Burning ROM 6 SE/ Nero Express 6 CD/DVD mastering software for data, audio and CD/DVD writing and copying;
• Ahead Nero VisionExpress 2 VCD/SVCD and DVD authoring software for advanced video capturing, authoring, full video editing and photo slideshow creation; users can crop, clean up, add special effects to photos and then add transitions and a soundtrack, as well as cut, edit, dub, and turn videos into Hollywood-style masterpieces;
• Ahead InCD 4 packet writing software for formatting rewritable discs so they can be used like large floppy disks with drag-and-drop capability;
• Ahead Nero ShowTime DVD-Video playing software for viewing DVD movies and personal video projects, along with MPEG-4 compatibility;
• Ahead Nero BackItUp backup software for complete PC backup, with an easy-to-use wizard interface for multiple backup modes, automatically scheduled backups, and backups spanning several CDs or DVDs;
• Ahead Nero MediaPlayer/Wave Editor management/jukebox software and audio editing software for audio file creation with various filters and effects;
• Ahead Nero Cover Designer disc label creation software for creating individual CD/DVD covers and labels; and
• Ahead Nero Toolkit tool software for critical media and drive analysis used by drive manufacturers worldwide

Note: Supports 12x recording on specified 8x DVD+R discs; please see user's manual for a list of specified 8x DVD+R media brands.

Customer Reviews

Best DVD writer of the bunch (and I tested a lot)
By the time I finish writing this review, this drive will probably be obsolete as new dual-sided DVD's are already hitting the market. That's ok, though. As you know, it saves a lot of cash to stay a step or two behind the newest and greatest computer gadgets, plus you're less likely to run into problems as bugs are slowly worked out.

Finding a good DVD burner turned into quite a chore. As the speeds have increased, it seems a lot of manufacturers have been pushing out these drives without testing them. Of the number of brands I tried, many cheaper drives were quite problematic. A few didn't work at all following installation. The only two drives I tested that I can recommend are this one and a TDK model drive with similar specs.

This drive works very well with the included Nero burning software. Nero also has an option that verifies the written data to make sure the burn came out ok. This is a great new feature most other burning software does not have. I'm a little disappointed that Nero's Disk Quality Test does not work with this drive, though. I believe it's a problem with the software, not with the drive, and I've been going back and forth with Ahead Software, the makers of Nero, to try and get it fixed.

Even though this is an 8x drive, it's capable of writing at 12x speed using compatible DVD+R media. This is a mindboggling amount of data, 16,620KB/sec or the equivalent of a 100x CD burner. At 12x, you can fill a 4.7GB DVD in about seven minutes and verify your data was written correctly in another six.

The drive has a light grey color that happens to match the color of my case perfectly. It will probably look out of place in a standard putty or black color case so keep this in mind if aesthetics is your thing. Compared to TDK, both drives performed great with name brand media. With cheap no-name media, this drive seemed to have problems writing to cheap CD's whereas the TDK drive had problems writing to cheap DVD's. Since everything is heading to DVD storage, and because this drive is much quieter than the TDK model, Sony ends up the overall winner in my book.

Hope the review helped.

Works Beautifully like 510A
I had Sony 510A for a long time, and then gave it to my friend recently. I was very happy with Sony 510A so I purchased 540A few weeks ago. I never had any problem with 510A, nor this 540A so far. I never ever wasted a single CDR or DVDR, I am very satisfied with this product.

Very good Recorder
Yo le he dado un uso continuo desde que lo compré, he quemado dvd y cd. Antes habia comprado de otras marcas LG, Creative y todas eran desechables.

Considero que fue una buena inversion, tenia que ser producto japones para que diera la talla.