For those who want to add rewritable DVD facilities to an existing PC which has no room for an internal drive, a self-contained, external drive is a good solution. It's also an ideal answer for those who don't want to delve inside their computers, or for those moving from location to location who want to share rewritable DVD facilities between PCs.

The slate grey and silver case of the dvd300E drive will suit most office or home decors, particularly those with HP PCs. The drive itself is physically compatible with any system that has a USB 2.0 or FireWire connection. The single USB 2.0 and two FireWire ports are located at the rear of the drive, so you can daisy-chain extra FireWire equipment through the drive if necessary. A sliding shutter mechanism prevents you from connecting both types of cable at once.

The DVD drive conforms to the popular DVD+RW standard, favoured by other companies including Dell, Mitsubishi, Philips, Ricoh, Sony and Yamaha. The DVD+RW standard is increasing in popularity, along with the competing DVD-RW standard, and features good compatibility with consumer DVD drives. For maximum compatibility however, you should opt for a drive that can read both formats. Internal multi-format DVD recorders are now available, so external versions should be coming soon.

The dvd300E offers recording speeds up to 4X, 2.4X for rewriting and 8X for DVD playback, making it one of the fastest external DVD recorders currently available. In tests, we backed up 100MB of mixed files to the drive in around 40 seconds. This is good, but we were a little disappointed with the corresponding record time on a DVD+R disc, which took over 2m30s.

Part of this is due to the recording software. While we're happy with Sonic's DLA program, which handles UDF filing for DVD+RW writes, its corresponding recording utility, RecordNow, doesn't fare that well against either of its main rivals, Ahead Software's Nero and Roxio's Easy CD Creator.

Other software supplied with the drive is average and includes ArcSoft's ShowBizDVD for creating DVD menus and Sonic's Simple Backup, which is a more thorough utility for creating selective backups than its name suggests. HP's Memories Disc, which it bundles with most of its printers, all-in-one printers and cameras, is primarily a photo management utility with some image editing tools, but can also be used for archiving digital photos.

The dvd300E offers a cost-effective and intuitive way to add high-capacity storage to your PC for long-term backup, filing or storing digital videos. However, if you're serious about DVD recording, you'd be well advised to opt for a more expensive multi-format DVD recorder to ensure full compatibility with PC DVD drives and consumer DVD players.

Specifications:
Size: 170x250x73mm
Weight: 1.4kg
Memory buffer: 2MB
Formats supported: CD-R, CD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW
Media supplied: DVD+RW, DVD+R disc
OS support: Windows 98SE, ME, 2000, XP
Software: HP's Memories, Sonic's RecordNow/DLA/Simple Backup, ArcSoft's ShowBiz DVD and MM Email, CyberLink's PowerDVD

Links:
HP dvd300E Web site
HP dvd300E specifications

BIOS, Aug 21, 03 | Print | Send | Comments (0) | Posted In DVD drive