LiteOn Dual-Layer DVD RW SOHW-1693S Review - Installation and Software
(Page 4 of 6 )
Installation
Here you can compare the LiteOn drive (bottom) compared to my NEC drive (top). The LiteOn drive is shorter in length which is great for compact systems, or systems that use stealth 5 ¼” bays.
Installing the drive is very simple with the quick installation drive. Shut down your computer and unplug from the power cord. Remove your computer case. Set the master or slave jumper on the rear panel of the DVD drive. Determining which setting you should choose is displayed in the installation guide.
Here you can see the mounting screws installed, it also gets a view of the Molex connector, along with the IDE plug, the green jump is currently set to master for my installation. The drive doesn’t get any longer than mounting bracket, if I had a water cooling radiator, or a 120mm blowhole at the top of my case, it would have plenty of room before causing a compatibility issue.
Connect the IDE cable to the DVD writer drive then connect the 4 pin Molex power connector to the drive. For some installations, you may want to install the audio cable to the sound card or motherboard. This option is not necessary, but it allows for standalone music playback with some hardware. Double check all of your connections, be sure all cables have been inserted fully, and are connected in the proper plugs. Once you are certain you have all connections and settings set, carefully insert the DVD writer into a free 5 ¼” bay and mount it with the provided hardware. Place the cover back on the computer and attach the power cord and boot the system.
Here you can see the drive installed in my case. I used the black bezel since it looks best with the black and red theme.
Software
Setting up the software is very easy. Once the system is booted and is fully recognized in windows, you can simply insert the Nero OEM suite CD into the drive. The CD will auto run and you simply install OEM suite from the menu. If space is an issue you can install just Nero 6 onto the computer just to get burning capabilities on your machine.
One of the major drawbacks to this package is that Nero 6 does not support dual-layer DVD burning. LiteOn takes care of that by proving a Nero URL where users can download a free upgrade to get dual-layer capabilities enabled in their software.
Since this is a review of the drive itself, I’m not going to go all into the details of burning actual DVDs. There are guides for this in the package, and support on the software’s website. Now we’ll actually get to the benchmarks of the drive itself to see how well it can write DVDs and CDs.
Next: Benchmarking >>
More Storage Devices Articles
More By Mike Mackenzie
