LiteOn iHAS 324 DVD burner review

Thankfully, the iHAS was much faster at burning discs, but, repeating the pattern seen with erasing discs, it was quicker at writing DVD+R and +R DL discs than it was at writing -R and -R DL DVDs. It wrote a DVD+R in four minutes and 14 seconds – the fastest time we've seen for any DVD burner. It wasn't quite as record breaking when burning a DVD+R DL, but it was still very fast taking 14 minutes and 18 seconds. A DVD+RW disc written in just under eight and a half minutes, which is also quick.

A DVD-R disc was written in just under five minutes and 50 seconds, which is fairly quick but we've seen faster performance from other DVD burners. The iHAS took nearly 19 minutes to fill a DVD-R DL which is quite slow, while it took ten minutes and 44 seconds to write a DVD-RW which isn't especially quick either.

The iHAS has a SATA connection, which the vast majority of PCs made in the past several years are equipped with. A SATA data cable and mounting screws are included in the box. Other extras include Nero Showtime 4 Essentials for watching DVDs and Nero Recode 3 Essentials, which can compress a 8.5GB two layer DVD movie so it can fit onto a 4.7GB single layer disc.

Neither utility is likely to be of much use for most businesses. A more useful software feature would have been the ability to encrypt discs so the contents can only be viewed with a password, but this feature is only available in the full version of Nero which costs around £40 extra.

Overall then, this is a decent DVD burner but the smart-erase function works, but takes a very long time to complete. A better option then is just to pick up a disc shredder, which costs as little as £40 from www.maplin.co.uk and takes only a few seconds.