In December 2002 I splurged and bought my first DVD burner: a Sony DRX-500UL. I paid $430 for the external unit, which burned DVDs at a whopping 2X (30 minutes per disc). At the time, a war of formats was brewing between DVD-R (DVD “minus” R) and DVD+R (DVD “plus” R). The Sony was one of the first I found that could burn discs in either format, so even though it was a bit more expensive than some other drives on the market, I was covered no matter which format ultimately prevailed.
On March 20, 2003, I made the mistake of leaving my laptop bag in my car overnight. When I woke up the next morning, the window had been broken out of my car and my laptop bag, including my brand new $430 DVD burner, was gone. Home owner’s insurance wouldn’t cover the loss because the car was parked in the driveway, and because we only had liability insurance at the time, I was simply out the money.
I waited three years to replace it with the drive you see pictured above: a Sony DRX-820UL. Like the previous drive this one was able to burn both plus and minus discs, but it could also burn dual-layer discs, and was also much faster. It was also just as expensive as the previous drive; maybe even a little bit more.
For many years, that DVD drive was my primary burner. It was external and USB, so it frequently got shared between systems. This became important later as I began purchasing laptops that no longer came with a DVD drive, but I hadn’t quite given up on physical media. Trust me when I say I got my money’s worth out of this workhorse.
Sometime around 2010, the drive stopped working. It wouldn’t recognize DVDs, and got to the point where the tray wouldn’t open. In a moment of frustration I threw the thing across the room, breaking off the door and cracking the case. Somehow, this fixed the problem. From there on out the thing looked like a piece of garbage, but still performed like a tank.
I was cleaning my computer room last week and ran across my old friend in the back of a closet. I plugged it in, but time got the best of it. The gears that open and close the tray appear to be gummed, and even once I forced a disc inside, it would no longer read it. With piles of other drives laying around, all smaller, lighter, and faster than this one, I decided it was time to part with my old friend. For the second time in its life it got thrown across the room — this time, for good.