i used to have a DRX-710UL. i bought it about 12/27/2004. i burned a total of four (4) dvd's over about a one year period (mostly within 2 months of buying the drive). those four dvd's were very difficult to burn. drx-710ul was very finnicky and unreliable.

the drive spent most of the one year ownership period in the box. i pulled it out about a month ago to make some more year-end dvd backups. this time, it wants to give me a lot of hassle just to burn one reliable dvd ("data verification" always failed). tried multiple computers. tried reformatting. tried firmware upgrade. firmware update failed and hosed the enclosure hardware. sent it to sony. they sent me back a DRX-810UL.

i had the DRX-810UL in use for about two weeks. was using sony media, which did not burn reliably. couldnt format some dvd-rw's after a screwed up burn. finally bought some generic dvd-r's. burned at 2.4x (whereas the sony media wouldnt get faster than 1x). burned perfectly, but the "data verification" failed miserably each time.

finally, i couldnt take it anymore. i had to rid myself of this problematic thing made by sony. i most certainly will not be buying another one of their products. here's a sony drx-810ul that wont be screwing up ever again...