ASUS External 12X Blu-Ray Burner with USB 3.0 BW-12D1S-U/BLK/G, Black
ASUS External 12X Blu-Ray Burner with USB 3.0 BW-12D1S-U/BLK/G, Black
- Diamond-Shaped Design realize aesthetics of technology
Extreme 12X Blu-ray writing speed with USB 3.0. Magic Cinema technology enables Blu-ray 3D entertainment. Diamond-Shaped Design realize aesthetics of technology.
List Price: $ 174.00
Price: [wpramaprice asin="B0051UY168"]
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[wprebay kw="blu+ray+writer" num="8" ebcat="-1"] [wprebay kw="blu+ray+writer" num="9" ebcat="-1"]
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USB 3.0 is 2.5x faster than USB 2.0, plus technical specs provided by Asus,
I ran one experiment to confirm that USB 3.0 really is about 2.5x faster (as some web sites claim) to burn Blu-ray Discs (BD-R) than USB 2.0 (ie. the USB channel is the bottleneck, not the disk or cpu speed). Using an ASUS laptop with an i7 cpu, a USB 3.0 port and 4GB memory, I backed up 22.3 GB of data (5,339 files) to a BD-R at 12x maximum write speed using the included ASUS/Cyberlink Media Suite program Power2Go 7. It took 01:00 minute for Power2Go to “prepare” the data for writing (these times are not rounded off, though they coincidentally look like they are).
Actual write time to write 22.3GB to BD-R(SL) at 12x:
– USB 3.0 : 11:00 minutes — 2.0 GB/min or 120 GB/hr
– USB 2.0 : 30:30 minutes — 0.73 GB/min or 44 GB/hr
For this experiment, USB 3.0 wrote data 2.7x faster than USB 2.0.
For another experiment, the measured write speed for a BD-R(DL) disc was 90 GB/hr (38.0GB at 8x).
Using this BD writer, so far I have written 7 BD-R(DL) disks at the max 8x and 4 BD-R disks at the max 12x speed without any problems, even though BD-R(SL/DL) Verbatim media is only rated for 6x speed. I also confirmed the 16x write speed to DVD+R media.
Currently Verbatim 25GB BD-R discs cost about $2/disc (getting close to the price per GB of DVD discs!) and 50GB discs are about $7/disc. Prices will continue to fall.
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Summary of hardware:
– this Blu-Ray Writer (Burner) is among the fastest available at this time
– USB 3.0 currently distinguishes this product from its competition
– writes DVDs and CDs like other BD writers
– ASUS is an excellent leading-edge brand
– Software [Windows-only]:
—– free Cyberlink Media Suite, which contains minimal-feature versions of these programs (until you upgrade to paid versions):
Cyberlink Power2Go 7
Cyberlink PowerDVD 10 with Magic Cinema
Cyberlink PowerBackup 2.5
Cyberlink InstantBurn 5
– I discovered a hard-to-see On/Off switch (doesn’t exist for DVD writers) on the back when it didn’t appear to work
– Color: Black
– Length: 9.5″
– Width: 6.5″
– Height: 2.4″
– Weight: 2.5 lbs.
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Software notes:
– This hardware is great. But the included Power2Go software has some problems — 1 fatal error (reported below) and 2 other serious bugs were found on day 1 of use. I recommend the really free ImgBurn software (no annoying paid-upgrade notices) which is a pleasure to use, is continuously being improved (unlike Power2Go, which is at end-of-life), and has an active and easily used forum site. Plus it works on Ubuntu linux.
– None of the 4 programs I tried (Power2Go, ImgBurn, Blu-ray Creator, Windows cut-and-paste) were able to successfully backup all files from my in-use C: drive without fatal errors and early exit. Even when files in use are set to be ignored by ImgBurn, it and the other programs still fail on files with no eof (Kaspersky and Windows has such files). That is because these low-end programs do not use the Windows-builtin feature of a Volume Shadow Copy (which Paragon uses when copying partitions) which would solve in-use, file-locking and file-eof issues neatly. One way to accomplish backing up all C: files is to first copy the C: partition to a new partition (eg. using not-free Paragon Hard Disk Manager or similar program) and then to backup the new not-in-use partition files using a program such as ImgBurn.
– Install “Cyberlink Media Suite” from the included disk by clicking on the picture with the burning CD (hover over it to see “Power2Go 7″). At this time (9/24/11) there is no firmware update, so the bottom icon does not currently lead to an available download.
– If it bothers you, turn off the always-on-top InstantBurn software:
—- on Windows 7 accomplish this by:
—— goto Control Panel->System->Administrative Tools->System Configuration
—— or navigate to [...]
——– click Startup tab
——– uncheck InstantBurn
——– click Apply, then OK
– To exit InstantBurn, either reboot (after disabling it from auto-start as described above) or Rclick on InstantBurn in the System Tray and click Exit.
– The included software has only minimal features and has some problems that may make it unusable for your purposes. You have to pay to upgrade any of the 4 component programs to get all features.
– Power2Go 7 fatal internal software bug found and reported to Cyberlink: Power2Go 7 code ignores upper-lower case filename distinctions and then crashes when it finds so-called “duplicate” files (eg. abc.txt and ABC.txt). When this happens the error message contains no clues as to which files caused it to crash. Luckily the crash occurs during the preparation phase before writing any data to disc. Same bug occurs for InstantBurn.
I also tried…
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|Very Good Results with Lenovo Laptop,
Very good performance and easy installation. Looks sleek with its glossy black enclosure. USB 3.0 is a clear advantage for blu-ray disk burning. However, some enclosure design aspects detract from ease of use.
Bought this to use with a Lenovo W520 laptop workstation running Windows 7.0 Pro. I do HD video encoding and need a reliable external blu-ray burner with USB 3.0 for video disk production. For years I used non blu-ray LG burners with excellent results. LG’s blu-ray burner is still USB 2.0 or I might have considered it.
This burner has a power adapter and USB 3.0 port on the back along with a power switch. It’s packaged with a USB 3.0 cable, power adapter, and useful but limited set of Cyberlink software. Cyberlink offers a discount upgrade to their full software suite. I find the provided Cyberlink software right for my needs.
Installation was easy. My laptop recognized both the burner and its USB 3.0 connection. Cyberlink software installed without issue. Blank blu-ray DVD disks are more expensive than regular blank DVDs so disk burn reliability is a high priority. I’ve burned twenty blu-ray video DVDs using ProShow Producer and other video encoding software. All disks were produced quickly without errors. These work perfectly in both Sony and Sharp Blu-ray players.
There are three enclosure design aspects I don’t like. They don’t affect disk burning performance and are clearly subjective. First, the top of the player is not flat so I can’t stack two of these like I do my bricklike LG burners. Second, the triangular blue LED light on top is very bright and distracting. I can tape over it but I’d prefer it be switchable. Third, the door opening switch is a long thin vertical plastic push contraption on the right side of the player. It lacks positive activation feedback. It is the same glossy black color of the case, is not easy to recognize, and requires a bit of fiddling to operate. It can take a few pushes to open the fold down door panel which allows the tray to slide out. I must take care when pushing this to avoid interference with the door panel opening function. This is overly complex, gimicky, and likely to be a failure point. Why not a simple highly visible pushbutton providing positive activation feedback with a simple slide out tray? Clearly, the designers overruled the engineers on this one.
In summary, if you need an external Blu-ray burner with fast USB 3.0 performance and require software to operate it, this may be the right choice. I prefer function over beauty regarding enclosures so I ding it a star, subjectively, in this department.
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|Asus External Disk Drive,
I bought this based on the excellent trade magazine expert reviews, primarily to use as backing up bluray & dvd movies onto my laptop hard drive to watch later as I travel a lot. I own the hp DV6 laptop available from Best Buy right now. The built in drive on the laptop isnt all that fast, but this Asus, with its included USB 3.0 cable, is insanely fast at ripping DVDs! And burning them.back to disk, too. Finding blank bluray media is still a challenge locally, dont know how well it burns blurays yet, but it does take a LONG time to rip a full bluray to HDD. Count on an hour or two, maybe more! I havent had occasion to use all the included software, but the installation is quick & easy.
Im very happy with this unit, integrates well wiith Windows 7& my laptop. Burns DVD disk movie only copies in about 15 minutes. DL DVD full movies in about 20+ minutes with all menus & special features. Would definitely recommend & buy again!
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