Thread: OWC Mercury Pro 8x Blu-ray External analyze

On the surface of OWC Mercury Pro Blu-ray drive might seem attractive. The company is attractive and robust features Fire Wire 400 Fire Wire 800, USB 2.0, eSATA, including all necessary cables and it has a Pioneer BDR-203 drive, which is rated at 8x for BD-R wrote the highest rating available and 16x for DVD + /-R. However, after using the device are impressed.

We tried first to test it with the eSATA interface, but it did not work with one of our test benches, which uses n Force 680i SLI chipset. It has been recognized by motherboards using Intel's P45 and X58 chipsets and boards "auxiliary controllers Marvell. But the benchmark, we via USB 2.0 on our test standard for continuity.

Standard DVD test went well, the OWC Mercury Pro writing 4.38GB of data in a single layer disc 06:15 a decent time, but not as good as the LG GBW-H20L, which lasted 05:43. On a brighter note, the Mercury Pro was able to rip a dual-layer DVD to your hard drive at 10:49, which competes with the best standard DVD-ROM discs, and much higher than the Blu-ray drive we've tested.

But problems arose again when we moved to the testing of Blu-ray. We simply could not write data to either BD or BD-RE using Nero Disc Speed app we use the optical drive all the evidence. If used as Verbatim, TDK, Memorex media or Panasonic, we were greeted with an error message almost immediately. OWC tech support said they were able to use the application is not a problem, but it is not our experience.

From the Mercury Pro version that we reviewed did not come with the software, we used the latest version of Nero 8 to test the skills of the Blu-ray. As mentioned, the Pioneer drive inside the device is designed for BD-R 8 x writing but it took 52:17 to write 22.5GB of data on disk. Compare that with time the 6x-evaluation of LG GBW-H20L 22:16. A second test gave a similar result interestingly, the more likely readers to write BD-RE discs, taking 45:19 to finish compared to a rewritable disc player from LG 39:35.