Summary-If you are looking for a new DVD burner, beware of the Sony DRU-510A. It has “known problems” which cause it to stop working after an unknown number of uses.
Here is my story
I was looking for a DVD burner as an effective way to back up various video files and large directories. I figured that I would finally shuck out the big bucks and get a DVD burner because I was sick of having CD-R’s all over the place. I was looking at the current drives available. The most appealing was Sony’s DRU series because they could burn both + and – formats in DVD-R and RW. I went to purchase a DRU drive and the newest model was the DRU-510A, which was capable of burning a DVD-R at 4x. So, I paid $310.50 plus shipping for the drive.
I used the drive to do about 6 burns with the crappy bundled software. In my opinion, the bundled Veritas Record Now DX is a horrible DVD burning program. The bundled Sonic solutions MyDVD program was never even able to compile any of my projects without generating errors.
I had just finished a project and I was going to burn a 4gig folder onto a DVD-R.
I run a test, just to make sure it will burn. The test turns out fine. Ok, so I burn the project and it generates errors about ½ way though the burn. I say “son of a….there goes about $2 for a DVD-R”. So I try again and I get another DVD coaster. I then restart my computer and try to burn again only this time in 2x. I get another error and I attempt to abort the burn. The software aborts the burn process, but my drive is still burning WTF???
I wait 10 min and the drive is still burning. I restart my computer and am forced to use a paperclip to manually eject the drive. I remove the DVD-R and the drive still won’t respond and is still blinking like it is burning.
I called Sony Tech support and described my problem. They say “this is a known problem, here is your RMA #”. This makes me think. “Oh crap, I wish I would have bought the new +/- Pioneer DVD burner”.
Sorry for the essay about my problem, I just wish that someone had posted this before I bought my DRU-510A.
