LiteOn IHAS124-14 24x SATA Internal DVD-RW - Grey/Black

When the DVD/CD burner in my 10 years old Lenovo desktop finally wore out, I initially tried to use an external replacement but found those thin units I tried (that bear different brand names but seem to come from the same Chinese source) were at best unreliable. I had seen Liteon SATA internal burners used in previous PCs I've owned and found them to be reliable, but my search for one now led me to think they were no longer available. Fortunately I found this site and have now fitted an identical burner which worked first time with no problem. As another reviewer has reported, it's very quiet when operating, which led me to think it was dead when I first tried it!

I love Liteon drives and have done since god was a lad. I've never had any problems with them ever. I've used them with all the major software and and I currently use it with Imgburn; a super program with a small system footprint, easy to use with great tutorials on their forum, Imgburn will pretty much burn any type of disc and best of all its free. I also sometimes use CDburnerXP another good program, and DVDShrink, a god-like program if ever there was one.Ok, on to Nero... it saddens me to see a once great program fat and bloated. if you ever get the Nero Suite it will install upwards of 21 programs :-0.I got Nero Essentials; a cut down version of the Nero Suite, but for most people Nero Essentials is more than adequate. I installed it to check out the TagLabel feature that; I found out later, can only be used on DVD Discs. TagLabel is a bit like Lightscribe only it doesn't need a special disc like the Lightscribe does, it can only do this in monotone not colours. Personally I find both of these features a waste of time and nothing more than a novelty, you will soon get bored of waiting for the image to be burned to the disc. So, unless you are an amazingly patient person don't bother with lightscribe or TagLabels, get a descent printer that can print full colour to a printable disc and get funky with designs.The liteon is both quiet and fast, I run an i7 system and treasure a noiseless PC; well as little noise as is possible. I have invested in the best silent running products and my PC is very quiet, I had made a poor choice recently in a Sony DRU-875s, these are very noisy drives so the addition of the Liteon product was a good choice and I bought it for its abilities to burn quickly without errors and run quietly etc. Since using Liteons I have only ever had one coaster and that was my fault.Grade A product. PS... this is a genuine Liteon not a rebadged Optaric or other brand.

Not quite sure what value "retail" pack has to simple drive pack as the software says it is trial and it is a very old edition of the software. (CD doesn't even define how limited the software is and suggests it is different between products it is bundled with). I didn't install it as my pc already has a paid for package I like. While the drive boasts it is quiet, I think it probably is to cheaper models of the past but the 14 year old Lightscribe HP (Toshiba-Samsung) unit it replaced was even more quiet both at burning spinning & initial boot up "I am here, got any bootable stuff" spin. This is not a game changer, it is quiet enough and the one spin at boot up is only a momentary noise. It works well, costs very little, pity ODD devices are falling out of fashion now they are so good & cheap. (This is not Lightscribe, that is a dead technology anyway, but it is M-disc compatible according to the box)

The media could not be loaded. I bought this Liteon drive to replace an older generic Dell optical drive that was about 5 years old. When the package arrived from Amazon, the drive was in a plastic bag, inside an Amazon branded Jiffy bag, no box, no software cd etc - very basic packaging. My first observation was, this new drive looked identical to my old dell drive, only difference is, it has Liteon on the product label on the back of the drive, and a more recent manufacturing date of 2022 - my old drive was dated 2016. Another thing to note is, the drive I received is identical to the product picture, plain black with no white lettering,If feels pretty decent quality - just what I would expect from an internal optical drive really and certainly no different to my original Dell drive that I took out,The install was simple - a case of removing the old drive and plugging the new one In using the original sata cables and mounting screws,Now - here is where I noticed something different. This liteon drive is whisper quite in operation, so quite in fact, when I first loaded an audio cd, I thought something was wrong - I couldn’t detect that classic whirling sound you associate with a disc spinning up!. My old Dell drive was by no means noisy, but you could always hear the disc spinning up. With this new Liteon drive, there is just about nothing. I have uploaded a video loading a disc- the phone mic picks up just a very slight spin sound that is not detectable at all in person,Haven’t burned any discs yet, but so far, playback has been faultless, and smooth - so far so good,At this price of £22 and next day delivery from Amazon, it’s a simple and effective optical drive replacement. and based on that, I can highly recommend it so far.

Given the several negative reviews on here I thought I'd give this product a few weeks of use before giving my verdict.Firstly, I see a lot of comments regarding a "Loud" noise when starting up your computer. This is a gross exaggeration. The drive makes a slight whir sound but it's nothing I'd class as loud. The disc drive is fine; noise is of a standard I would expect from a mechanical component like this.As for durability I've been using it for almost 2 months and I've had no issues whatsoever. It's a great value product for the price and an extremely worthwhile addition to your Budget PC setup.

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