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If you are in the market for a new internal DVD writer, then you might want to consider the new LiteOn iHAS524. Described as the world's fastest drive, this SATA unit has a few interesting selling points, including LabelTag which adds readable text to the data side of any writable CD or DVD, SmartWrite which is sort of overclocking for DVD-R/+Rs, and SmartErase, a method of rendering discs unreadable. More on those later.

Having a not too distractingly logo plastered black front, and a quite short form factor, this 5.25" unit should sit neatly in even the smallest of PC cases, I'm sure those with shuttle PCs would like the fact it only sits 17cm deep. Being SATA, connectivity is easy providing your machine isn't from the dark ages, also Windows XP onwards will require no drivers. A cable might not be supplied, but screws definitely are, as is a copy of Nero Essentials 8 which should sort you out with everything you need

Alas my freeware software of choice, CDBurnerXP, doesn't support LabelTag, but Nero installed fine on 64 bit Windows 7 and so far has not angered the PC gods in quite the same way earlier versions managed to. The software also includes various things for making your own DVDs in addition to burning data discs, but if none of this suits you and living without some of this drive's specific features is acceptable, then there are plenty of other alternatives you may already have or wish to try.


LabelTag

Let's get this one out the way pretty quickly, you aren't going to use this very much for two reasons. The first of which is it makes seeing the labels actually quite difficult, this isn't even remotely like the sort of fancy holographic CDs you might have seen on commercial releases. However perhaps if you wanted to send out material and force a copyright line or contact details around the outside, then maybe it could be of some use, just remember it is difficult to read.

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This works by writing multiple sessions to the disk, firstly the main data as a session, after which it begins to burn the LabelTag as a second. Because it takes up space, it will reduce the capacity of a CD-R from 118MB upwards depending on how thick you make it, and for a DVD-R that shoots up to 546MB. When we tried to burn a LabelTag onto a CD-R it took absolutely ages, and appeared to have a blank text-less ring after it. Perhaps it just doesn't like CD media for this kind of thing.

A DVD-R took about 8 minutes to burn a label, which was definitely there afterwards but still only actually readable if you angle it to the light correctly. As a side note, you can use almost all of the data area for a label if you wish to write big fancy lettering that requires the right angled light. Anyway, moving on...

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