NEC ND-3540A DVD Burner
 

Background:
At present, I have a LITE-ON SOHW-812S DVD+/-RW drive. This is my only optical drive, and is not a dual layer burner. I formerly had a CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive which was quite convenient for making exact copies of disks, but it died. :(

I am now considering adding a dual-layer DVD burner to my system. Scanning around on newegg, I came across a great deal on a the NEC ND-3540A DL DVD Burner at $45.99, with free shipping. It gets awesome reviews on Newegg, but I wanted to see if anyone had any experience with this drive (or similars) here, or advice on upgrading. I realize virtually any drive should work under linux these days (especially from somewhat-decent brands, which I believe NEC to be), but just wanted input. The product's webpage on newegg can be found here.

Thanks. :)

My question too: I came here to LinuxQuestions for the exact same information. Sorry I can't help but I'll keep looking for an answer to this and post if I find one.

This looks like someone is having trouble with it in Slackware...

http://www.linux360.ro/forum/image-vt7737.html

Looks like some sort of complaint about the writing speed, it's hard to say really, as I don't speak.. Romanian, I believe it is.

Were you thinking of buying the drive through newegg?

There are apparently some firmware issues with the drive, according to http://crashrecovery.org/oss-dvd/DL/viewtopic.php . I'll probably hold off for now and stick with single-layer media (better compatibility, cheaper, haven't seen much where DL would be THAT big a deal).

Yes, I was looking at NewEgg. I found another one, that hopefully will work with linux. This brand, Lite-On has several models that are reviewed as working well, so I am going with that. They are listed here on the HCL. Also, all of the reviews look good on NewEgg. Granted, most of those reviewers were using Windows :rolleyes:
But this is the drive: DVD+/-RW LITEON SOHW-1673S BLK RT - Retail ($43.99)

I'll post my results in the HCL when i get it! :cool:

Well, as posted above, my current burner is a LiteON and it works well. The only thing I don't like about that LiteON is that it's slower than the NEC, and doesn't support DVD-R DL. (Not that anyone uses -R that much...)

Hi,
Saw your posts and just wanted to add a few thoughts. My LiteON 1633 went a bit haywire, and my OEM engineer has, this very afternoon, replaced it. He tried a new LiteOn 1693 (their latest I believe), and that was faulty! Then he fitted and left me with a new NEC 3540A, saying that they had had some reliability issues with LiteOn.

Hope this helps

Jessj

Let us know how your NEC 3540A works with linux, whenever you get a chance, okay?

Will do. It was installed via Windows XP, so first I have to find out how Suse 9.1 reacts when I next log on to it, which I'm hoping to get around to within a few days. (If Suse doesn't automatically recognise it, I'll have to find out what to do to reconfigure it.)

Cheers,

JessJ

I look forward to hearing your report. :)

I am wondering whether or not I should upgrade at all with the costs of DL media. Seems to be high and obscure still.

Works flawlessly here on kanotix(debian).
I burn anything thrown in the burner...yes dvd-r dl too.
I have a 3rd party firmware which is now on version 5 from club.cdfreaks.com...there is a forum specifically for NEC burners.Check the sticky's...look for liggy & dees firmware.

I have dvd-r 8x media that burns without errors @ 12x
Throughout the "media" forums there you will find many many people posting results of tested media on various burners.

How hard is it to perform a firmware upgrade under Linux? Any significant risks?

Couldn't be any easier:)
http://binflash.cdfreaks.com/