Home > Consumer Reviews > Samsung SH-S203N 20x DVD±RW DL SATA Drive (Black)

Have used this drive in my desktop computer system for around 6 months with rock solid performance. Typical single layer DVD burns are around 16x even on 8x certified media. This particular drive has been inside a Pentium 4 3GHz Sony Vaio and a home built Quad Core system. The drive has worked extremely well in both systems.

The drive is fairly quiet. The drawer mechanism is better than the Sony's I have used, but not as solid as external stand alone burners (although I've never seen an internal drive that is that good). It fits in a 5 1/4 bay like any other optical drive.

Do remember this is a SATA interface. If you are slim on SATA connectors on your motherboard, be very careful about this purchase. My Sony only had 4 SATA ports, but this new Asus motherboard has 10, so no problems. Just check to be sure you have the ports and the power supply connector.

Have never used the Lightscribe function.

Great product, burns DVD-R DL discs quick and effortlessly. Received product within a couple days.

These guys were great. I originally ordered the wrong Drive. It was my fault. But they had me return the wrong one and suggested the right one to me which they promptly sent out. They kept top notch contact with me through e-mail and they were awesome. I would use these guys anytime.

That's right, Buy Direct wants a top rating and will pay ("reward" is the way they put it) you 5% of your order price for it. Not bad, I guess they get better placing on Amazon listings with the higher rating. I don't have a problem with this policy, sort of a win-win for everybody. Anyway the DVD Drive showed up real fast and works fine. I did have to buy two SATA cables to install it in my box. These were easy enough to find online once I realized I needed them. This entire process was simple and satisfying. They honestly deserve the 5 stars. I am not getting the 5% "reward" anyway as I waited past the 30 day limit they have on this offer. I wanted to install the unit and use it before I wrote a review. Good luck!

Very nice, comes with an 12 or 18" SATA cable of good quality, and an molex to SATA adapter if you are out of SATA's for removable storage. This alone is worth $8 if you live near a computer store, around $20.00 if you don't and don't plan on ordering anything. Also comes well packaged and with Nero 7 and 8 essential (you'll only need 8). The firmware on it is the most up to date, so no flashing/updating is needed there. All and all it's ready to go, right out of the box.
The drive itself is very quite! What noise you may here is a very pleasant spinning, like a small well balanced fan. It's also very fast! It has cut my game loading times by a third, and reading files off of disks to almost nothing! Granted, this was coming from an 8 year old Sony IDE, but Sony still sells that exact same model I had!
I haven't tried the light-scribe abilities yet, but I'd assume they work.
End result, this is a great deal, especially if you don't know much about computer hardware. If you have SATA ports, it comes with everything you need! Combined with speedy shipping, this whole experience gets an A++ from me!