Design
External optical drives are enjoying something of a renaissance right now, largely due to the explosive growth in netbooks. For the most part (and as long as you ignore Asus' own Eee PC 1004DN) they're optical drive free zones, which is fine until you need to install software, rip music, watch a DVD or back up files. It's this market that Asus' impossible to say out loud SDRW-08D1S-U External DVD-RW Drive should appeal to. Our review sample came in a shiny white finish — there's also an all-black model — and aside from a USB port on the back and a socket for the supplied vertical stand, there's not too much to the SDRW-08D1S-U. That's typical of an external DVD writer, however, where portability and simplicity are really the key factors.
Features
The SDRW-08D1S-U External DVD-RW Drive's basic specifications are just that — very basic. It's a super-multi DVD burner capable with every optical disc format you'd care to throw at it short of Blu-ray. In speed terms it'll write at the following speeds: DVD+/-R(SL) 8x (CAV), DVD-RW 6x (ZCLV), DVD+RW 8x (ZCLV), DVD+R (DL) 6x (ZCLV), CD-R 24x (CLV), CD-RW 16x (ZCLV) and DVD-RAM at 5x.
The SDRW-08D1S-U External DVD-RW Drive connects and powers via USB, and comes with a split USB connector with two ends to ensure that the unit is powered correctly. It may be possible to run the SDRW-08D1S-U from a single USB port if your system pumps enough power through it, but we'd suggest that was a bad idea, simply because if the power output wobbles a bit, your burnt discs could turn into coasters very quickly indeed. There's a practical consideration for netbook owners there, though, as most netbooks ship with only three USB ports, and this is going to eat up two of them all by itself. This could also prove something of a challenge if your netbook's USB ports are too far away from each other.
The SDRW-08D1S-U comes with a software CD. Thankfully, you don't need the CD in order to install the drive, but what you do get is Power2Go software, a firmware update utility and Asus' Turbo Engine software.
Performance
In order to test the unit's notebook suitability, we connected it up to an MSI Wind U100 netbook via the two left USB ports. It's worth keeping in mind that the presence of an optical drive will have an effect on your netbook's overall battery life, and it'd certainly be unwise to begin a burn on a netbook with a low battery.
Nero DiscSpeed 4 gave us an average 6.08x speed with a single layer DVD-R — undoubtedly the most common writeable DVD format that the SDRW-08D1S-U is likely to come across. That's a touch lower than the 8x stated speed, which isn't inconsistent with the way manufacturer claims usually go in these cases. Naturally, you'd get better results from any internal drive — USB is part of the bottleneck here in speed terms.
Like a lot of slim external drives that operate at high speed, vibration is a bit of a worry with the SDRW-08D1S-U, and never more so than when it's vertically mounted. Installing software via the SDRW-08D1S-U, we could feel the unit's vibrations through a heavily loaded desk, and hear the drive motor whirring away. That's more of a concern if you're going to be using the drive in a totally portable environment, and we'd strongly suggest at least placing it on something flat and secure before starting any burn process.
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