detail information

What's inside the box?

On this page, we will take a look at what the drive came shipped with and take a look at the drive and its technology.

Contents of the box:

• The external drive itself
• FireWire 6-pin to 6-pin cable
• Hi-Speed USB 2.0 cable
• LaCie DVD Utilities CD-ROM (2)
• Blank DVD+R Media
• Quick install guide
• Power supply and adapter cable (2)

The blank DVD+R9 DL media (Verbatim) was given to us separately by LaCie for testing purposes.

Now it's time to take a look at the drive itself:

The drive has a black front bezel.

The LaCie d2 DVD±RW Double Layer uses a green LED light for both reading and writing. The blue LED light on the left is the power LED, but also functions for power ON/OFF.    

On top of the case itself, we see a deep imprint of the LaCie logo, giving it a 3D effect.

On the back of the drive, there are from the left: Lock slot (anti theft), ventilation outlet, 2 FireWire 400 interface connectors, a USB 2.0 interface connector and a power supply connector. (The only additional thing it could have, is Audio out connectors).

We connected the drive without any problems and here is a screenshot from Nero info tool:

Our drive came shipped with firmware 2.04, and this is the latest version available from LaCie. We miss Mt.Rainier support and a larger buffer size.

And another shot from Nero Burning ROM:

We do not really find anything alarming here, but Mount Rainier and a larger buffer would have been nice.

Now it's time to take a closer look at the write technology used by the LaCie d2 DVD±RW Double Layer:

CD-Recordable:

The LaCie d2 DVD±RW Double Layer uses Z-CLV, (Zone-Constant Linear Velocity), to write at its maximum speed of 32X. The drive wrote the last zone at 32X and this gives an average speed of 27.35x. Two drives for comparison is found below.

The Philips DVDRW885 uses P-CAV (Partial-Constant Angular Velocity) to write at its rated speed of 24x. This gives an average speed of 23.05x.  

The Plextor PX-708A uses P-CAV (Partial-Constant Angular Velocity) writing strategy to reach it rated speed of 40X. This gives an average speed of 33.38x.

For comparison we have made the following table: 

The LaCie d2 DVD±RW Double Layer got an average speed. It is not the fastest and not the slowest drive we have tested so far.

CD-ReWritable:

The LaCie d2 DVD±RW Double Layer uses CLV (Constant Linear Velocity) writing technology to write at 16X for CD-RW discs, the average speed is 16x. Below are some other drives for comparison.

The Pioneer DVR-107D uses Z-CLV, (Zone-Constant Linear Velocity), to write at its rated speed of 24x, this gives an average speed of 22.47x.

The Plextor PX-708A, with its P-CAV (Partial-Constant Angular V elocity) write speed of 24X for Ultra Speed CD-RW discs is among the faster writers, due to its high starting speed of 20.01x.

For a better overview ,we present the following comparison table: