Sony DRU 500A

[woody]

Anyone with this writer,be careful updating the firmware.Flashing a new firmware 1.OD is causing bad drives for some people,RMA is required.Best advice is to hold off on flashing the drive for now.Will keep you updated

[roadworker]

Already done it a few days ago....Lost the capacity to read Key2Audio and CactusDataShield reading is crippled..........
I wiched I could reflash it to 1.0c....

[woody]

Yeah... been reading some other forums where people have failed flashes.Might be their own fault!The new firmware makes the drive more media friendly..at a cost it seems.

You own the drive RW?cool...Deb just ordered me one for Christmas!

Here is a post by a not so happy customer..saw a couple others.
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Great first impression to SONY CORPORATION!!

receive my dru500a on Friday November 8th after trying to find one for three weeks. Burnt two dvds and on Tuesday November 12 I flashed my firmware from 1.0c to 1.0d and my dru500a becomes a DW-U10A drive, whatever the heck that is. After emailing SONY support and calling them, the bottom line is they have no clue whatsoever and Friday November 15th I find out I have to ship the drive to SONY, wait another 3 - 4 weeks minimally for them to repair or replace the drive!!

Kudos is all I can say! Believe it or not, I've purchased two sony products in my 40 years of living and based on this outcome, not to mention when I'll actually get my drive back, it will be my last!! They have no cross ship program, nothing at all and the level two support person I spoke with today, basically did not care at all! Lets keep Sony the number 1 electronics company and keep buying their stuff! Bad taste left after this and their support? What support? Nothing was even attempted and I don't care about the fact that the drive is new.. Wait for something else to come out and don't waste your time. Perhaps its an isolated problem, perhaps not, but flash the firmware for a dru500a with a manufacturer date of October 02, 2002 and I hope you have better luck...

Comments posted by Burger who rated this Writer 1 of 10 - November 15 2002

[roadworker]

The flash worked fine for me,also the drive's info is still correct......but Sony seems to b aware of problems,because there will b a 1.0e firmware update within the next weeks......normally Sony isn't so generous with firmware updates....

[X-BoNeS-X]

Sony DRU 500A <== damn that was my choice of dvd burners was waiting for price to drop and then buy .. but ummm might consider differ one ...

roadworker are ya aussie ?

[roadworker]

Originally posted by X-BoNeS-X
roadworker are ya aussie ?

Nope...why?

[ChickenMan]

X-Bones-X, speek to Crash, she has one on order. But it appears most retailers have run out of stock here.

[elpresidente]

same here ....

[sirok]

I'm waiting for liteon, to see if it's as good as their cdr/rw-burners! They targetting at a $299 price or cheaper!

And for the sony DRU 500, the most dvd-readers reading ONLY the first session from a multi-session disc. So dvd+r is only useful if you have large quantity's of data to backup. For one session's you can better use dvd-r, also the media is cheaper, and more dvd-readers will read it.

[alienbeing]

Well it just happened to me. My DRU500 is no longer able to Burn.
I updated firmware which worked fine. The drive was working good afterwards too. Even noticed better performance from it.
Burned several CDRs after flashing then that was the end. Nero started reporting errors when trying to write. I reflashed the drive again but to no avail it didn't help. I kept at it and rebooted my system many times trying to burn a Sony 32x CDR. Finally somehow it started working again. I managed to burn two more CDs but found they couldn't be read after burning by the DRU500.
I actually physically looked at the CDs themselves and noticed areas on the CD where the Burner did not write. Near the center of the disc were many spots that stood out. You could see without any problem where the drive was burning and would stop then start burning again then stop... and so on...

Now as for the firmware update I can maybe assume that a possible cause would be that it increased the performance of the burner but may have actually stressed the burner beyond it limits thereby causing it to eventually fail. I have not removed it and tried it in another computer. I went out and found another one in my area that may have been the last one available so I bought it. I am just going to return the defective one soon and get my money back for it. And never flash it again until I am certain it's not going to kill the drive.

As a note before I flashed the drive with the new firmware the drive worked great for almost a month. Shortly after updating it failed.

[Alll]

Free Firmware Upgrade - DRU-500A and DRX-500UL



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Thank you for your interest in the free firmware upgrade for Sony Dual RW drive models DRU-500A and DRX-500UL. This new firmware will allow your Dual RW drive to record at 4X on 4X compatible DVD+R media as well as improve the DVD-ROM reading performance with DVD recordable/rewritable media.
We expect this firmware to be released on or before December 9th, 2002. Please check back on this site then to download and install the firmware. We anticipate that 4X compatible DVD+R media will be commercially available later in December.

Thank you for buying a Sony Dual RW drive, we sincerely appreciate your business.

http://sony.storagesupport.com/freeupgrade/

btw can someone tell me where is it made in? Thanks