Digital Research (IDVDRW8D) DVD±RW Burner

Pros: Great price, strong reading, cd burning
Cons: Slower on dvd-r and dvd-rw formats

Introduction This is my first DVD recordable drive; however it is my 7th optical drive (1 dvd-rom, and 6 cd-rw's, all are evaluated on epinions). After the experience with my 1st cd-rw drive and feeling like a beta tester for high ...

Pros: Low price and easy enough to install and set-up.
Cons: Software is definitely an issue.

Have spent the last two days, downloading firmware, reconnecting IDE cables and jumper settings and replacing DVD copy/ripper software. The software that comes with the drive, Pinnacle and Intervideo Win-DVD are both useless. Have yet to complete 1 usable copy of DVD back-up. Have gone from as low as 1% copied before program ejected the disk to 100% and still can not use anything. But I am stubborn, I will get this to work or throw the thing in the trash, like all the useless DVD's that I have burned so far. Right now I have the drive set as the slave to my DVD-ROM drive on the secondary IDE port. I us Win XP, AMD 3000+ cpu with 1 gb ram and 80 gb hdd. I use Power DVD player, Nero 6.1 and DVD Cloner II. I haven't tried to burn any CD-R's yet. the CD-ROM is okay and can play DVD's okay. I have read comments on other sites, but after I bought this thing. About 70% are negative, mostly with the shipped software. In the long run, you get what you pay for.