Burn before reading

A slim portable DVD writer that looks sleek, is easy to use and comes with disc encryption technology the Asus SDRW-08D2S-U Lite is also highly portable weighing in at just 280 grammes. It doesn’t even need an extra power source as it’s juiced by the USB port of your netbook or Ultrabook computer.

Since neither the netbook nor ultra slim Ultrabook or ultra-slim profile notebook computers don’t usually come with an optical drive, the U Lite could be their perfect companion.

Although a portable optical disc drive cannot compare to a desktop computer’s mode in term of writing and reading speeds, the U Lite boasts good writing and reading speeds for a portable drive.

It is capable of reading data from DVD+R, DVD-R, DVD+RW, DVD-RW, DVD-ROM and all double-layer DVD discs at 8X speed and can read DVD-RAM disc at 5X speed. It can read CD discs of all types at 24X speed. It can access DVD video playback at 4X speed.

It supports writing DVD+R, DVD-R and DVD+RW at 8X speed and can write DVD-RW, DVD+R(DL), DVD-R (DL) discs at 6X speed while writing a DVD-RAM disc at  5X speed. It can write a CD-R disc at 24X speed and a CD-RW at 16X speed.

Its DVD and CD access times are 160 milliseconds and 140 milliseconds respectively.

The companion disc in the package also comes with E-Green Engine technology and provides an E-Green Mode that activates when the drives are idle for 2 minutes. Once activated, drive applications are closed when not in use to help conserve energy.

The package comes with CyberLink’s Power2Go disc application suite, which makes burning discs a piece of cake and also allows you to secure your data by password-protecting it or hiding file names on your burned discs.

Power2Go is easy to install and once the process is complete, it will display a data disc-burning icon near the bottom right corner of your computer screen. You can simply drag files or folders that you want to back up to a DVD disc to the icon. The icon will report how much data you have selected to burn and how much space is left. Once you have gathered all the files you want for backing up, you can simply press the burn now button to write the data on the DVD disc.

In the full-function mode of the Power2Go suite, you can use it to burn a photo gallery CD or DVD disc. Or you can burn a system recovery disc for booting up your computer in case your Windows Operating system crashes.

The fun part of the Power2Go is that you can use it to encrypt your files to prevent others from viewing them.

When you click on the button for creating a secure area on the disc, Power2Go will prompt you to select whether you want to use 128-bit or the more secure 256-bit password. You have to type the password twice to prevent inaccuracies and you’re also given the option to select whether to hide the file names or not.

The application will then show a pink window on top of the non-encrypted data on the disc. Just drag the files you want to burn and hide to the pink window.

When the disc is burned, the names of the hidden folders will not be shown. To access them, Power2Go provides a secure browser. Click on it and enter a password to access all the encrypted files. The Power2Go secure browser is a portable application that can be accessed in any computer without having to install the entire suite of applications.

Even if you choose the option of showing the names of encrypted files, you will still need the secure browser of Power2Go to access them. Copying and renaming them is no good.

During the test, I had no access to an 8X DVD-RW disc so I tested the writing speed with a 4X DVD-RW and found that the speed was still acceptable. It took me about 14:25 minutes to burn 4.5 GB of data to a 4X DVD-RW disc. The speed should be much faster if used with an 8X DVD-RW disc.

ASUS SDRW-08D2S-U Lite retails for Bt1,650.

 

Key specs

_ Disc Formats: Audio CD, Video CD, CD-I, CD-Extra, Photo CD, CD-Text, CD-ROM/XA, Multi-session CD, CD-R, CD-RW, CD-ROM , DVD±R(SL/DL), DVD±RW, DVD-ROM(SL/DL), DVD-RAM, DVD Video

_ Reading Speed: DVD+R, DVD-R, DVD+RW, DVD-RW, DVD-ROM, DVD+R(DL), DVD-R(DL), DVD-ROM(DL): 8X; DVD-RAM: 5X; CD-R, CD-RW, CD-ROM: 24X; DVD Video Playback: 4X; VCD Playback, Audio CD Playback: 10X

_ Writing Speed: DVD+R, DVD-R, DVD+RW: 8X; DVD-RW: 6X; DVD+R(DL), DVD-R (DL): 6X; DVD-RAM: 5X; CD-R: 24X; CD-RW: 16X

_ Access time: DVD: 160 ms, CD: 140 ms

_ Interface: USB 2.0

_ OS Support: Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, Mac OS X 10.5 

_ System Requirements: CPU: Intel Pentium 4 2.0GHz or AMD Athlon 2100+ or higher, RAM: 512 MB or more is recommended, HDD: 10 GB or higher

_ Power: USB Power +5V ± 5%

_ Dimensions: 142 x 142 x 20 mm (LxWxH)

_ Weight: 280 g