I was about to buy the components for a new system and had a Sony DRU120C in my cart. I was first wondering how this drive differs from the DRU820A, but after coming here it looks like the Sony drives don't rate very high.

What would you recommend over the Sony, and why?

Welcome to CDFreaks Forum.

Sony don't manufacture their own drives anymore. The last were the 530. They buy from other vendors.

Sony have bought drives from LiteOn in the past, and some latest 18x Sony drive were Samsung 182.

For now Sony have joined with NEC in Optiarc.

Sony drives have been overpriced. You can buy native LiteOn, Samsung and NEC dives cheaper than Sony.

Sony drives aren't bad, but you never know what's in the box.

Sony is also at the forefront of manufacturers pushing legislation and technology designed to prevent legitimate purchasers from making personal backups. Buying a Sony product supports theirt efforts and some CDF members would rather support their competition.

And also, you never know what kind of bugs a Sony product will have, but when you find them, you can be sure they probably will have some bugs any other respectable and conscientious QC process would have found and quashed. A good example of this is a Sony SLV-370P I bought my parents, which is a VCR recorder/DVD player combo unit. It has the most annoying 'bug' of forgetting the cable channels previously set, so it's some kind of memory/power problem that wasn't fixed. So every time you power down the unit, it 'forgets' the programmed cable channels (which is only supposed to happen if the electricity goes off for more than 5 minutes). While you can push the "menu" button to have it 'remember' the set channels, that is not something that should happen. The unit was highly rated by users, but curiously no other user in their reviews mentioned this bug. So not only can you not be sure of who made the Sony product in question in some cases, in others you can't be sure what kinds of problems you'll discover with it after purchase.

Sony used to a be top notch company, but that changed sometime after it had such a breakthrough success with the first Playstation, and certainly after the greater success of the PS2. From what a CNBC program that aired last week documented about Sony, it is like those two events contributed significantly to Sony's general lack of being careful in product development and in assuring product quality. They act like all they do will succeed--just because their is a "Sony" tag on the product in question.

So it is a good thing, that Sony branded optical drives were made by other manufacturers. Sometimes you can even make a good deal.
As Liteon 6S series are fading out - at least here in germany, why not get some Sony 12x drive, that is the same hardware?

Michael

Back in the day a "sony" sticker was a cool thing to have.., now I'm waiting for a SATA 7S series at my local hardware store

Cool, thanks for the reply guys. Even before they came in, the things I read on this forum convinced me to pick up the Pioneer DVR-111D instead of the Sony DRU120C, but now I have learned some good info for the future as well.

The key to buying ANYTHING these days is to go and search by MODEL number and NOT just by BRAND name.

you are right