phonograph recording burning can be a delicate appendage : it ’s safe to understate your computer natural action while burning to head off ruining a disc . This , of row , spell out downtime while waiting for your disk to burn . With blazingly fast maximal burn rates , Sony ’s external DRX-830UL - T wo n’t go out you twiddling your thumbs for too long .

The DRX-830UL - T is a very truehearted outside standard candle / videodisc rewritable drive , with the capableness of combust at a maximum rate of 18X on 16X single - layer DVD . In my testing it took five and a half arcminute to burn a 4.6 GB single - layer DVD at 18X. burn speed for double - layer videodisk was n’t shabby either . At a rate of 8X , the DRX-830UL - T take rough 19 minutes to sunburn 8 GB of data onto a double - bed DVD+R phonograph record . Copying 655 mebibyte from the same twofold - layer disc onto our test system ’s hard driving took one bit and 45 seconds .

The DRX-830UL - T has an attractive flatware inclosure . The clit to eject the disk tray , locate on the enclosure ’s right side , is well-heeled to locate and press . The burner ’s disk tray is hold in by a door - like cover , which open when you push the eject release . This cover not only make the private road more aesthetically pleasing ; it also protect the twist from dust .

The DRX-830UL - T ’s include computer software for Mac users pales in comparison to the Nero Essentials software package packet bring home the bacon for Windows exploiter . The only included Mac app is Roxio ’s Toast 6 Lite , which is sufficient for your canonic burning needs , but if you bid to take full advantage of the DRX-830UL - T ’s capabilities , you ’ll require Toast Titanium ( ) .

timed trials

Scale = moment : Seconds

How We test : We ran all mental testing with the rewritable drive connected via FireWire 400 to a dual-2.5GHz Power Mac G5 with Mac OS X 10.3.9 installed and 512 MB of RAM . We recorded the prison term it took the effort to burn 8 GB of data onto forked level DVD+R Verbatim media using Toast Titanium 6.0.7 , and also the time it remove to burn 4.4 GB of data point onto 16x DVD+R Verbatim media . We then timed the copy of a 655 MB file from a burned double layer videodisk to the internal operose drive.–Macworld science laboratory testing by Brian Chen .

specifications

Macworld’s buying advice

Fast , quick and well - built , the DRX-830UL - T systematically produce reliable culture medium even at its fastest burn rates . Whether you ’re backing up information or mess - producing your main movie , you ca n’t need for much more from a CD / DVD burner .

[ Brian Chen is an adjunct editor forMacworld . ]