Comments: As someone with very high storage needs, who has recently become very conscious of the *comfort* associated with computer hardware, I love this drive. I am sick and tired of hardware that makes a lot of heat and noise. This drive isn't remarkably quiet or cool, but it doesn't offend, and it's huge -- the bigger the drive, the fewer you'll need. With a good case I could have five of these and not complain. It's not as fast as some of the smaller ones, but that doesn't really make any difference for my purposes.

Comments: This drive reads very fast but it's not very tolerant of bad or damaged media. I've tried about 8 types of 1-8x media and I'd describe the media support as being comparable with the NEC 2500a this thing was supposed to replace -- that is, not very good. 8x TDK DVD+R and 8x Verbatim 8x+R burn poorly, as does all the 1x media I tried. Maybe they'll fix this with firmware later (1.22 is current atm) but I'm not going to count on it.