The main positive points: The LG GSA-H42N is called a “Super Multi DVD Rewriter” since it supports recording on all available media formats including CD-R/RW, DVD±R/±RW, DVD±R Double/Dual Layer, and DVD-RAM.

The 18x DVD+R and DVD-R writing on our media produced good to excellent quality. The drive writes CD-R media very fast but with poor quality. DVD-RAM read and write support at 12x is a very nice feature. Both the 16x and 18x writing speeds were very fast and most media burned with good to excellent quality. Reading speed for DVD±R and DVD±RW single layer discs is very fast.

The main negative points: While this is considered a “DVD Burner” it is a serious issue when all of our CD-R media have C2 errors. We hope LG will continue to work with us and provide a firmware update to ramify this situation. Slow reading performance of Pressed Double Layer DVD-Video disc at 5x and Pressed Single Layer DVD-Video disc at only 10x.

Final Thoughts: This drive has a lot going for it with its fast write times and good DVD quality results, the only two things holding it back from being a top performer is its slow Pressed DVD±DL reading and questionable CD-R writing quality.

To sum it all up, this is what we would say: “LG GSA-H42N is a fast performing Internal Super Multi Format DVD Burner with good to excellent DVD burn quality.”

By using our CD Freaks price grabber feature we found the retail LG GSA-H42N is listed at $29.99 (May 2007).

You may discuss/comment this review below or in this forum thread.

Thanks to:

	Maxell USA – For providing the media used in this review.
	Memorex USA – For providing the media used in this review.
	Rima.com USA – For providing Taiyo Yuden media used in this review.
	Advanced Media/Ritek-USA – For providing the media used in this review.
	Verbatim USA – For providing the media used in this review.
	ExtremeMhz – For providing the Maxell 12x DVD-RAM media used in this review

Introduction

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Reactions on this item

Posted by KIMSON VU (guest) on Saturday 19 May 2007 12:36

Thanks for reviewing!

I'm live in Vietnam and i'm looking for DVD RW with good prices.I think this optical driver will my choice.

It cost 46$ (1 years full waratnty ) in Vietnam

KIMSON
www.handicraft-vn.com

Posted by plopop on Friday 01 June 2007 03:24

My new LG GSA-H42L (the Lightscribe version) did not have the ability to write at 12x when I first got it. I flashed it with firmware found through this site and now it burns at 12x fine. It will also read faster than 10x now. It's turning out to be a nice burner. I've done a few test burns at 18x with Sony media and they turned out fine.

Posted by MANVIR (guest) on Saturday 02 June 2007 06:52

Posted by Dwight Walker (guest) on Sunday 24 June 2007 15:39

I have been trying to burn Tevion DVD-R discs with the LG H42N with Nero Express and CDBurnerXP Pro on XP Pro SP2. Nero kept bombing out if I had more than 500MB per session burnt. CDBurnerXP Pro had to have small sessions too or the PC would reboot or crash. Either the LG is too fast for my PC or the Tevion DVD-Rs are too low quality and only let me burn 1G before freaking out. I have wasted about 5 or more DVD-Rs so far out of 25. I never wasted any CD-Rs with a Sony CD-R drive. Sony is superior.

Posted by Dwight Walker (guest) on Monday 25 June 2007 07:01

I found DeepBurner.com was a better DVD burner software. I still had to limit the burn size to 500MB each session and do multi-session or Windows XP would crash. This is very time consuming for backing up several gigabytes. I am looking at using tape backup instead of DVD burner as it will not crash Windows XP as it is not so demanding on the operating systems, memory, hard disk space and motherboard. Minimum 1GHz processor was recommended. I only had a 900MHz AMD processor.

Posted by Sisif Tasyl (guest) on Wednesday 18 July 2007 18:25

The only good thing I can mention about this drive is the price. Other than that, it was the worst burner I've ever seen!
After the installation (in a hp pavilion xt926, running XP pro), it was introducing a delay of ~35 sec. at bootup, when the pc was doing nothing - maybe trying to figure out what the darn thing is?! I've discovered that the bios was under the impression that it was a hard drive (!). I reconfigured the bios and that delay vanished...
Now, I'm using Nero to burn my discs. Weird things happend whit this drive:
1. While writing, the hard drive works like crazy, way to much for the amount of data it has to transfer.
2. The REAL recording speed is maybe 5-10 times lower than the selected one !!! It takes forever to burn anything! The reading speed is OK though.
3. The PC clock is slowed down (!), so at the end of the burning process is ~5 min. back !
No errors are reported. Don't know where to go with this!

Posted by rasim birlik (guest) on Friday 07 September 2007 18:29

LG GSA H42N Super-Multi sucked with vista. vista cannot detect this dvd rom. u need to update firmware. but how? you cannot upload new firmware to dvd ram while vista cannot detect it. peh. install xp again, upload and install new firmware after that (if you are not dead cancer) format hd, install vista and use LG GSA H42N Super-Multi. thats the stupid drive. in the mean time you can update firmware if you find it. beacuse lge.com dont support that kind of things. you should use local distrubitor page if you have driver. (Turkish distrubitor page ( www.ufotek.com.tr ) sucked). good lock

Posted by Ruy Silva (guest) on Wednesday 24 October 2007 01:16

Gostaria, de adquirir o software Lg Writ,
compativel com o Windows Vista Ultimate.

Posted by Ruy Silva (guest) on Wednesday 24 October 2007 01:25

Gostaria de adquirir, o LG Writer Solution,
compativel com o Windows Vista Ultmate.

Posted by Heng (guest) on Thursday 01 November 2007 03:36

When I tried to use the feature lightscrible, On the screen it has shown "the printing completed" after just a couples of seconds. But surprised to see no label printed on the lightscrible CD. I have tried another CD but still same problem. Please could you advice me? Thank in advance.

Heng

Posted by PEDRO (guest) on Tuesday 20 November 2007 11:47

Like made download

Posted by john (guest) on Saturday 29 March 2008 14:01

Does it support cd with capacity more than 702 MB e.g discs with capacity 850 MB?
i have tried updating firmware but nothing chanched

Posted by Jonathan (guest) on Friday 18 July 2008 19:13

I don't know if i can perform lightscribe with my dvd player. I have this one ( GSA-H42N) and i received 1 lightscribe cd, but my computer doesnt recognize my dvd player in roxio! Help me!

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