Sony DDU 1621 Internal DVD Drive

Pros: Quiet and Excellent reading, fast, smooth operation
Cons: none

My first CD-ROM drive was a Memorex CD-362E (36X-MRX). I had it for almost 5 years until it quit working early last year. Without knowing much about the performance and quality of a CD-ROM drive, I went out and bought a refurbished Liteon LTN-525 CD-ROM...

Pros: Silent
Cons: Questionable Reliability Sony Support Nonexistent

I purchased this drive in September 2004 for basic DVD reading duties. I needed an affordable DVD ROM drive with a silver bezel, and this drive was it. I figured that since it had the Sony name, it would be a reliable choice. I used it for months ...

Pros: Excellent speed, DAE... Quiet...
Cons: Reliability is questionable...wait this one out!

Although the drive itself has excellent read speeds and DAE and is also one of the quietest I have tried, I cannot say that the DDU 1621 is a very reliable drive for a long-term user. I, personally, have 2 DDU 1621s (one in each of my PCs) and after just 6 months or so of use they crap out. Make no mistake; they still read media. Unfortunately the drives lock up after a few minutes of use and crap out. For those who are looking for a decent DVD-ROM might want to hold off on buying the Sony and either wait for a possible "firmware" fix or get a Pioneer or Lite-On drive. Personally, I favor Pioneer's "slot-fed" DVD-ROM series; they have excellent read speeds, flawless DAE, lightning fast Random Access Times, and run cooler and quieter than even a laptop!

Pros: Hasn't caught fire
Cons: Will not play DVD+R, DVD-R, DVD+RW, CD-R.

Drive does not recognize anything but commercial DVDs, no DVD+or-Rs, no DVD+RW, nothing. Half the time it doesn't even recognize commercial DVDs. Apparently a firmware rollback to v2.9 will solve this problem (tricky operation!!), which makes the conspiracy theorist in me think that Sony updated it's firmware to discourage the burning of DVDs by making them not work in their drive. Regardless of why the drive is like this, it is complete trash, I'll never buy Sony again (even if this is likely an OEM drive).