DVD drives have been at the bottom prices for a fair while currently, with models obtainable for as little as £15. The latest iHAS324 from Lite-On isn't somewhat that reasonable, but at currently £20 it's still very a great deal in the bargain basement category.

The iHAS324 is an interior SATA drive, with Lite-On providing a SATA cable in the package. A copy of Nero 8 Essentials is also incorporated, which offer a polite range of burning tools.

In an effort to distinguish itself from the limitless additional drives on the market, Lite-On contain an aspect called SmartErase, which aims to guarantee confidential discs can be rendered ineffective. The SmartErase software is found in Nero 8 as well as is extremely simple: just select which drive you want to make use of and after that choose any Quick Erase or else Full Erase.

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The Quick Erase aspect is next-to-useless although, as it only erases data from a small part of the CD. Even though this means the compact disk will no longer work in an optical drive, someone with data recovery application will most likely be capable to recover the majority of the data.

As far as disc burning goes, the iHAS324 is more remarkable. Lite-On quotes write speeds at 24 xs for DVD±R, 8 xs for dual layer DVD±R as well as 12x for DVD-RAM. Access times for DVDs as well as CDs are 160ms with 140ms likewise.

When we used the iHAS324 through our burning tests it formed a little good result. Burning 4.37GB of data to a DVD+R disc took the drive just four minutes as well as three seconds to complete the entire process. All through the burn procedure it pointed at 24x, averaging out at 16x for the duration. Access times were also very close to Lite-On's extracted figure, at 165ms.