Question 1

Is this external or is it internal use only?

Accepted Answer

This drive is designed to be placed into a computer case, into a 3.5 inch drive bay, with the face sticking out the front.

There may be a possibility of placing this drive into a SATA drive enclosure to use it as a network or tower drive, although many of these enclosures are used for hard drives. You will want to look closely at a drive enclosure before purchasing it for this sort of CD / DVD drive.

Question 2

Is this drive external?

Accepted Answer

No this is an a internal drive but if you have a 12v power supply to power the drive and have a port for sata to usb it can be.

Question 3

Is this a discontinued unit and does it include burning software that is compatible with Windows 7?  thank you

Accepted Answer

There is some confusion taking place because of how events unfolded:

Sony/Optiarc created this drive. It is a safe to assume that their target audience was in fact the makers of disc duplicators and automated disc publishers. There is strong evidence supporting this, but I only have to much room to type, an no-one probably really cares anyway! :o)

Not long after this drive had been released, (and VERY well received not only by duplicator and publisher manufacturers, but also end users who had discovered that it is easily THE go-to drive for overburning double layer media), Sony announced the planned shut-down of their whole optical drive department. This move made sense given optical media is quickly giving way to smaller devices with higher capacities and that are also far more stable and robust than optical media.

An American company that designs and builds duplicators, publishers and other equipment, VinPower Digital, quickly went to work with Sony, and succeeded in keeping this line of drives in production. It still is as of today. (2014-10-03)

I'm reasonably certain that production hadn't actually stopped. The announcement had been made, VinPower stepped in, and a deal was made to keep it going. I'm pretty sure my VinPower rep had said that the production still takes place in the same Sony facility, too, but don't quote me on that. It was a couple years ago.

Now, to address the burning software part of the question:

I have bought some 5280-PLUS drives "onesy-twosey" here and there. NewEgg has been one of those places, (OF COURSE!), and the did come with the disc. If you buy a single 5280-PLUS, the disc you get is made by VinPower Digital and included to help you get started. ALL of the software on that disc is also available for free download from the web too.

I believe it will ALL work with Windows 7 (which is the OS I use on all of my machines), BUT, you may have to do a little reading and apply a simple work-around in some cases.

Hope that helps!

Question 4

I'm looking to replace my desktop's optical drive. I want one that will COPY cd's & dvd's as well as do the regular reading/play/burning. I only have one space for a disc drive in my HP Compaq Small Form Factor desktop. The description is kind of vague, it doesn't actually come out and say that it will make COPYS of discs. It does throw the word "duplication" in there, so I'm hoping that's what they mean. I have one of those made by LG in an old IDE machine, it works great. I just want to be sure this will do it ALL. -?

Accepted Answer

Ohh yes it should read write copy and all of the above. From cd to dvd dl. As for installing the drive it should be plug and play as the drive can be install from Vista to window 8.1. Make sure you get a good burning program for the drive. Also verbatim disc works best for this drive since this drive has overburn which burn close to the size the disc has.

Question 5

Does this drive play dvd's/install disks/CD's? or does it only burn those? If not, do you know the specific name of a "normal" disk drive on a computer? or a simple one a good fellow like myself might purchase?

Accepted Answer

I would suggest you purchase this one. It does everyhhing a drve should. Plays cd's and dvd's and dvd dual layer discs, It will burn cd's   dvd's and dvd dual layer discs. It is quiet and burns quickly.

Question 6

Is it compatible with Windows 8.1?

Accepted Answer

I am using this in a Linux based system, but it is a standard SATA interface CD/DVD drive so it should work with any Windows 8.1 system as long as you have a SATA interface available.

Question 7

are these sony drives (oem) Original Equipment Manufacturer only ..not retail??

Accepted Answer

I have no idea who the OEM is.  I can tell you this - I ordered and used three so far, ordered at different times.  They all worked great when properly working.  However, after a certain amount of normal usage, the trays of ALL three started sticking.   You have to play with the eject button to get the tray to open.  This gets progressively worse as time goes on.  So, since all three have exhibited the same problem, I would surmise there is a design problem.

Question 8

What size bay will this fit into I have the weird half external 5.25" bays in the front and I was planning on that but is it 5.25"? Or 3.5" I need it to be 5.25"

Accepted Answer

The drive is 5.25 inch (it has to be to accept normal size CDs/DVDs).

Question 9

How slow will it burn cdr?

Accepted Answer

My experience has been the same for CD's as CDR's. The slowest speed depends on the software but I have recorded at 4K.

Question 10

Is this Drive in fact a Sony Optiarc 5280S-CB PLUS Not some Bulk Knock off?

Accepted Answer

This is not a knock-off. It is legit and a very great drive. I bought this for burning Xbox games and it works wonderful.

Questions & Answers