By Kire Terzievski, RMIT Test Labs
June 18th, 2002.
2. Lacie DVR-104
The Lacie drive was the only external drive we received. You can connect the Lacie drive to your desktop using the supplied IEEE-1394 card. The FireWire bus makes the drive hot-pluggable, so it can be easily moved from computer to computer without having to shut down or reboot the system.
The Lacie incorporates a Pioneer DVR-A04 drive, which means it can record DVD-RW and DVD-R formats, as well as CD-R and CD-RW. We initially thought the internal Pioneer drive would be a lot faster that the external Lacie drive, but in fact they were on par with each other in all our speed tests. Like the Pioneer, the Lacie drive took a very long time to finalise -RW discs. We were amazed to see that it took just as long to record a 353MB file as it did to record a 51MB file.
On the software side, the Lacie drive featured Sonic MyDVD, DVDit, Cyberlink Power DVD, Roxio Toast 5 LE, and Veritas PrimoDVD, which was pretty much the same as Record Now DX from Veritas. Lacie didn't throw in any re-recordable media but supplied three CD-R discs and one DVD-R disc.
| Product: | Lacie DVR-104 |
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| Price: | AU$1399 |
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| Vendor: | Lacie |
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| Phone: | (02) 9669 6900 |
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| Interoperability: |
Writes to both DVD-R and DVD-RW; FireWire interface. |
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| Futureproofing: |
Future is uncertain and too difficult to predict. |
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| ROI: |
Most expensive, but has the advantages of being external. |
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| Service: |
1-year parts and labour warranty. |
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| Rating: |
Issues with finalising DVD-RW discs. |
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2%
4%
