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Upgrades Data Storage Hardware

Upgrade Doubles +R Speed For Some Lite-On Drives 195

Posted by timothy from the but-don't-blame-us dept.
Binsbergen writes "Owners of a Lite-On 451S (lowest price $ 69.50) and a Lite-On 851S can load the firmware of the Lite-On 832S and burn their DVD+Rs at 8x speed and also write to double-layer media. Before this seemed impossible, because many manufacturers have told us that upgrading a 4x drive to a double-layer writer was impossible due hardware differences. Of course it's important to note that 'overclocking' voids your warrantee and should be done after have carefully read the instructions. Read more about the procedure, the results and others experiences in the official 451S@832S, 851S@832S -- It works! thread. That's a dirt-cheap upgrade!" (Sounds similar to the NEC upgrade mentioned in May.)
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Upgrade Doubles +R Speed For Some Lite-On Drives More

Upgrade Doubles +R Speed For Some Lite-On Drives

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  • Don't bother if you don't own one already. (Score:5, Informative)

    by garcia ( 6573 ) * on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @05:14PM (#9701196)
    If you don't currently own a 451S don't bother with purchasing one. The mad rush that this is going to cause will only raise the cost and the wait time for this specific unit. After a quick search I found the Lite-On 8x DVD+/-RW drive that does double layered writing for $89 (see here [newegg.com] at newegg - BTW, I just did a quick search for Lite-On, I don't work for newegg or even recommend them).

    Seems to me that paying $20 more (without even checking anywhere else) to purchase a drive that is meant to write at 8x (apparently in both + and -) and won't void your warranty is a much better deal.
    • don't bother with purchasing one.

      I agree depending on the price but it is still a great 4x drive.

      I've had my 451S for about 6 months. I got it at *cough cough* Walmart for $89 (cheapest place at the time without rebates). This drive was popular and was a highly reviewed and liked. I am sure there are many already in circulation that can be used as a guinea pigs

    • Re:Don't bother if you don't own one already. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by afay ( 301708 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @05:32PM (#9701387)
      Actually the 832s at newegg is $86 with free shipping. After you add shipping to the $69 price of the 451, it turns into $79. So you save $7 and void your warranty... definitely not worth it. Also, the upgrade only upgrades burning of +R discs at 8x not -R.

    • Re:Don't bother if you don't own one already. (Score:5, Informative)

      by zakezuke ( 229119 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @05:49PM (#9701529)
      Seems to me that paying $20 more (without even checking anywhere else) to purchase a drive that is meant to write at 8x (apparently in both + and -) and won't void your warranty is a much better deal.

      Unless you plan to void your warrenty from the get go. I'd have to double check the number of things you can mod the liteon drive to do, but from memory you can have faster ripping speeds, multi region ability, booktype editing (i.e. this dvd-r gets labeled as a dvd-rom), and generally a vast number of useful things. Also from my understanding. In short, if you are going to screw with it anyway, might as well save the $20.00 assuming all things are equal.

      But that's the thing... I haven't bothered to mod my drives because i'm happy with them at present, and I wouldn't bother modding my drives until such time the cost of the DL media drops to single digit numbers.

    • More to the point: You can get the 12x lite-on at newegg right now for $90.99, or a NEC drive with dual layer support, 8x, for $79.99. The latter is supposed to be super good at burning to cheap media and also be very quiet.

  • Hm... (Score:5, Funny)

    by xenostar ( 746407 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @05:17PM (#9701221)
    ...There are some articles that, no matter how much you try, you just can't think of a funny comment to.

  • Where Can I find Dual Layer Media Awyways? (Score:4, Informative)

    by jameskojiro ( 705701 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @05:19PM (#9701234) Journal
    This patch is fine and dandy, but I cannot find any dual layered discs anywhere!

    • That's exactly my problem. The dual-layer drives are pretty cheap but there's no media. I'm just holding off waiting (and wanting) to buy a drive until the media is available.

      Or maybe someone will come up with a hack for my Sony DRX-500ULX that will let me write to dual-layer discs (that would rock because I love this drive).

    • Re:Where Can I find Dual Layer Media Awyways? (Score:4, Informative)

      by mythosaz ( 572040 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @08:56PM (#9702890)
      Meritline [meritline.com], SuperMediaStore [supermediastore.com], and even Best Buy [bestbuy.com] have the Verbatim Dual Layer "Solution" pack for about $25. It gets you ONE dual-layer disc, 8 single-layer 4x burnables, and one DVD-RW. Considering the cost of the other pieces is about $5-$7, it's at least $18 for a single piece of dual-layer media right now.

      SuperMediaStore and Meritline represent pretty much the cheapest places to safely buy large quantites of high-quality media (read: Ridata, et cetera).

      So, if you've got something important to burn, and it's 8.5G in size, it better be $20 important, you'd better not accidentally make a coster, and don't forget to pay your VAT if you're in one of those countries.

      Also, the dual-layered NEC2510A runs about $79 (or cheaper!) at NewEgg [newegg.com].

    • This patch is fine and dandy, but I cannot find any dual layered discs anywhere!

      Yes, i noticed that too while looking for a DVD-writer.

      Also, appearently you can't write these dual layer DVDs at more than 2.4x, even on a 8x drive.

      It's faster to burn 2 single layer DVDs. (And probably a lot cheaper, even if you *could* find these dual layer DVDs)

  • Same Trick for Apple Powerbooks (Score:5, Informative)

    by artlu ( 265391 ) <artlu@3.14artlu.net minus pi> on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @05:20PM (#9701248) Homepage Journal
    The TiG4 Powerbooks had the same type of firmware 'fix'. I can't find the link to the upgradable firmware, but it doubled the speed of the MATSHITA DVD-R UJ-815A. Definitely was a major improvement over the standard 1x DVD burning that came with my powerbook.

    GroupShares Inc. [groupshares.com]

  • LiteOn quality, any others? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Sort of off topic, though i'm talking about LiteOn

    Who are the other major manufacturers of DVD writers? Not the rebranded ones, be careful here, since Sony for instance gets most of their drivers from LiteOn. I am just wondering if anyone has had success writing DVDs with a non LiteOn drive.. because I've gone through 2 LiteOn RMA's and they make shit IMO. Either that or South East US got a bad palette of them...
    • I've purchased or recommended many (more than 15) for me and others in the past 2 or 3 years. Never had a single problem with any... Oh, except my dads, who took me quite literally when I told him to go blow out his computer to get the dust out... He did, with 150+ PSI at close range. NIC pooched. Lite-On CD Burner pooched. CPU Fan pooched -- I've often wondered how many RPM's he had that puppy turnin'.

      .

  • NEC 2500 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Hollins ( 83264 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @05:22PM (#9701267) Homepage
    I have the NEC 2500 that can be firmware-upgraded to the 2510 dual-layer model. People have been reporting that the new firmware works fine, but no one on any of the message boards has yet verified that dual-layer DVDs burned with the new firmware will play on standard DVD players. I'd be curious about the same issue with Lite-On models until there is more testing.

    Also, dual-layer media is still very expensive. A DL disc costs much more than twice as much as a single-layer.
    • Also, dual-layer media is still very expensive. A DL disc costs much more than twice as much as a single-layer.

      That's not enough information to go on. $2 a blank? $5 a blank? If price is such an issue, you can wait. Single layer blanks used to cost a lot too.

      I'd say DL is worth it for movies as it doesn't require recompression or stripping extras to fit a movie onto a single layered disc. I wouldn't do it for archive backups, but it would make a good short-term backup such that one doesn't have to ris

      • Re:NEC 2500 (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Jeff DeMaagd ( 2015 )
        I'm not sure what happened there. I might be tired, I guess.

        I'd say DL is worth it for movies as it doesn't require recompression or stripping extras to fit a movie onto a single layered disc. It would make a good short-term video backup such that one doesn't have to risk damaging their original disc. Of course, such a use is technically illegal in the US. This would be a boon for DVD authorers, for amateur and small video businesses too.

        I wouldn't trust it for a sole data backup because of a slightly

  • This has been around for a long time. (Score:4, Informative)

    by fallenangel99 ( 687794 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @05:23PM (#9701273)
    The "hack" was released around December/January I believe. Kinda late there /. Anyway, Lite-On has some excellent burners. I got mine during Black Friday and let me tell you, the 4x burns at 8x =)

  • Wait, wait... (Score:5, Funny)

    by wbav ( 223901 ) <Guardian.Bob+Slashdot@gmail.com> on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @05:23PM (#9701278) Homepage Journal
    Load firmware for another drive? Seems to me it's like chopping off your toes to fit into the shoe, Yeah it might look better, but it could also hurt. A lot.

  • Easier R upgrade (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @05:23PM (#9701285)
    Upgrade Doubles +R Speed

    Just get a "type R" sticker at AutoZone, glue it on your drive's tray and voilà, instant speed increase. Works with every drive on the market too...
  • While the speeds are finally getting there, i think i'll hold off a little further on buying a DVD-RW. I'm also a little angry about the supposed 'dual-layer' capability - regular dual layer discs are 9.6 gb, not 8.5!
    • While I don't know for certain, it may be something like the MODE2 used for (S)VCDs, where you can fit 800mb+ of video on the disc by using the bits meant for error correction.

      So you get 8.5gb of (error-corrected) data, or 9.6gb of (non-corrected) DVD video.
      • DVD video is still error corrected; it's largely just a UDF filesystem containing .vobs and various support files. This is good because a single bit error in a video stream, while not the end of the world, can cause nasty artifacts (like half of each frame falling to bits until the next keyframe).

        I've certainly never seen a dual layer disk with more than 8.5G of data on it. Not to say you're wrong; 1.1G of ECC for 8.5G of data sounds about right (~1 bit ECC per byte of data). I just don't think anyone a
        • Actually, there's more than 11.1% error correction data on a CD. More like 26% of each sector for Red Book CDDA and then an additional 12.9% overhead (header, sync and stuff) for Yellow Book Mode 1 CD-ROM. Mode 2 is slightly "better" with 288 bytes less error correction per sector.
          This leaves you with a total of just under 65% of the total capacity of the disk used for data storage and the rest for headers and error correction codes.

          Anyway, I wouldn't think it'd be less on a DVD (all them electromechanic o
    • No, regular dual layer disks are 8.5, not 9.6gb. Remember how single layer disks are called DVD5 and dual are called DVD9? For whatever reason, the second layer is not as large as the first. http://www.disctronics.co.uk/technology/dvdintro/d vd_formats.htm

  • What about the Sony's? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by grolschie ( 610666 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @05:24PM (#9701302)
    Aren't the Sony DVD writers just a re-packaged Lite-on? Or vice versa? Pretty much the same writer I read somewhere, just comes with a different logo and software package.
    • Lots of companies use different manufacturers from time to time.

      I had a second generation 2.4x DVD burnder from them. Turns out it was actually Ricoh than manufactured it. The thing was a piece of crap, burns would fail all of the time, not much would read it, et cetera. Finally I got fed up and found a trick for flashing it to be the Ricoh brand.

      Ricoh's site had 3-4 versions after the version of firmware that Sony offered. A relatively simple trick switched it over and it's been working great ever since.
    • i work for sony dvd/cd-rw support. the firmware update for the 530a and the 530ul doubles the write speed. but don't buy one. nearly every call that comes into the center is about a 530 that has died for abolutely no reason. they either die completely or just one function dies. cds will read and write but dvds won't; other times its oposite. a lot of times they are dead right out of the box. then to get it RMAed you have to jump through a bunch of hoops and call in 10 times. its retarded and i try to bypass
    • As shown here [rpc1.org], Sony does use Lite-on for this drive.

  • Upgrade older 401S/411S to 8X too! (Score:3, Informative)

    by izx ( 460892 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @05:29PM (#9701348)
    http://forums.speedlabs.org/ (membership required) has a series of mods/steps to let your 401S/411S write DVD+Rs (and -Rs when they arrive) at 8X, effectively converting them to a 8xxS drive. Drives thus converted can later be flashed with original 8xxS firmware. (401s must first be "overclocked" to 411s and from then to 8xx).

  • ...to "upgrade" my existing single-layer 4x DVD-Rs to dual-layer...

    I don't know about you folks, but the blank media for DL is still just way too expensive. I can't find anything under $7 per DVD.

  • Lite-on isn't alone (Score:5, Informative)

    by Jugalator ( 259273 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @05:38PM (#9701435) Journal
    There's tons of other burners that can do dual layer with unofficial firmware upgrades.

    Even my el cheapo drive (Pioneer DVR-A06) might be able [cdrlabs.com] to do the trick, although I doubt Pioneer will release their hacked firmware for it just for the heck of it. ;-)

    I once knew the link to pages summarizing the recorders where dual layer firmware was available but have lost it since then. :-( Maybe someone else can provide one?

    Anyway, if your recorder supports recording 8x discs, chances are that it has a modified firmware for dual layer recording floating around somewhere, as one of the requirements -- a 140 mW laser -- is a common requirement for 8x DVD+/-R burning and DL burning. Philips has confirmed this [videohelp.com], but says that in some cases the Optical Pickup Unit is still not of high enough quality. Obviously not always, since DL burning with modified firmware has been done by people upgrading their drives like this.

    Finally, it's still a risky business and you might bust your DVD-ROM drive by upgrading to a hacked firmware. And I doubt warranty applies. ;-)

  • More possible upgrades (Score:5, Funny)

    by Lord Bitman ( 95493 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @05:42PM (#9701466)
    it's amazing how many things run faster by simply doubling the voltage. Blenders, Toasters, Fans, even light bulbs burn brighter!
    Now, manufacturers CLAIM their devices were not intended to be used in this manner and that faster devices use different hardware, but just plug it up and see for yourself that they are obviously profit-mongering scumbags!! I see it running faster, what other unseen differences could possibly exist? Why would they even design their products similarly or base one version off another if they werent actually the exact same thing underneath?!
  • Anyone heard about anything similiar for hte Plextor 708a? I paid a fortune for the drive (230$, best price at the time) 8 months ago, and its worthless now :)
  • I have been a HUGE supporter of Lite-On drives for quite a while for this very reason. They are notorious for being easily flashed to higher read/write speeds with out any issues. I pity those fools who pay top dollor for $ony drives when they could just buy the exact same drive from Lite-On for a lot less.
  • Anyone know a good place to buy dual layer media?

  • Upgrade my Celeron (Score:3, Funny)

    by Nom du Keyboard ( 633989 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @06:20PM (#9701816)
    Can I download some firmware to upgrade my Celeron to a full Pentium 4?

    • Can I download some firmware to upgrade my Celeron to a full Pentium 4?

      Joke though it may be, you actually can. Yes, there was once a trick of connecting a trace on Celeron CPUs that would double the cache, thereby making it the equivalent of the more expensive Pentiums (I believe I read of this in the P3 days, though).

      There were plenty of comments by people saying that the extra cache could be marginal, leading Intel to disable it and re-market the chips as Celerons, but I never heard follow-ups from a

  • Alright! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by igrp ( 732252 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @06:21PM (#9701825)
    Cool. Lite-On has been semi-officially supported modifying and, to a lesser extent, even hacking their firmware.

    Well before the 401s came out, there were rumours - originating from "usually well-informed sources" - that there would be a "leak" to allow it to burn DVD-R media (the 401s is a DVD+RW drive).

    And, yup, that's exactly what happened. Yes, DVD-R support is still somewhat shaky and, the whole thing is mostly a result of volounteer work. But Lite-On has, at least from what I hear, been pretty supportive.

    Lately though, they seem to have pulled the plug because of pressure from other manufacturers and patent attorneys (those drives are officially DVD+R drives so Lite-On would not be paying royalties to use the DVD-R standard).

  • I found a different firmware that says it will change my CDRom into a CDWriter...lets load that and....

  • it works (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @06:59PM (#9702126)
    Just flashed my LDW-851S. Everything is ok so far... yay :)
    • Just flashed my LDW-851S. Everything is ok so far... yay :)

      Unfortunately she's called the police and they'll be here to question you about your 'flashing' any minute now. BTW, "LDW-851S" is very poor leet speak for "Ladies".

      -Adam
  • I own one of the 451S drives, but this is a non-windows house (well, I have some, but they are made of regular flat glass).

    I've got the patches, in .rar format, and I'd assume that if I can unpack them, a quick session with dd would feed them to the drive.

    Does anyone know of a unix/linux x86 version of unrar?

    Cheers, Gene

    • I have no idea how to apply the patch under Linux, but you can get a trial version of rar/unrar from: http://www.rarsoft.com/download.htm [rarsoft.com]. You can also get the source for the unrar under some sort of freeware license from: http://www.rarsoft.com/rar_add.htm [rarsoft.com]. Not to be a Gentoo zealot, but under Gentoo an 'emerge -v unrar' will get you the free unrar utility. I imagine other distros have a package of unrar as well.

      Cheers,
      the_crowbar

      • Thanks a bunch;

        I (just for grins) ran "apt-get install unrar" and 10 seconds later it was installed.

        Now to see if it will work. I grabbed two different files from the site in a message above in this thread,
        451S.GSB6-GSB7.patched-rs.rar
        LDW851FP.r ar

        Which one should I attempt to put in my 451S, which signs on in dmesg as:
        hdc: LITE-ON DVDRW LDW-451S, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive

        I think its the latter one, but whats the first one do?

        Cheers, Gene

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