External CD DVD Burner review: LaCie d2 LightScribe

I've always advised my readers against using paper labels on optical media but there are still a lot of five inch DVDs burned at home with labels glued on them. The progress of ink printing technology over the past few years has been really impressive but then the ink cartridges too are relatively expensive. Using a permanent marker is a better solution for sharing the discs with friends and family but there is no other alternative to labels if you want things to look professional. Fortunately, Hewlett-Packard has come up with LightScribe technology which looks professional and is a great solution for the required needs.

LaCie has licensed this technology from HP and has put it in the affordable external CD DVD burner called d2 DVD±RW 16x Double Layer FireWire. The device burns CD-R/CD-RW, DVD-9 (double layer)±R media, and DVD-5 (single layer)±RW. The package is a bit bigger than a traditional bread toaster and the silver and red box has a grayish silver burner with six pin to six pin FireWire cable, USB 2.0 cable, blank LightScribe media, power supply. The DVD burner comes along with user manual, driver disc and Quick Install Guide.

I plugged the external CD DVD burner in to the wall power outlet and then plugged in the FireWire cord from a PC to d2 drive. The DVD ROM inside has drivers for both PC and Mac and it also has programs for creating labels.

Installing the external CD DVD burner is very easy and quick; it took just fifteen minutes for me to get the job done and I got to SureThing CD & DVD Labeler SE application. The interface is really easy, I could design labels with one of my photos from digicam put in the hard drive. I then composted curved text and it ran parallel with the disc's curve on the image. When I was satisfied with the graphic creation, I clicked print and put in the LightScribe special media.

You need specific media of LightScribe for the LightScribe burners. The DVDs and CDs come with reactive dye coating on them which change the color when infrared light is hit upon. This same laser will burn the data to standard CDs and the text and image are printed on the label side.

The process surprised me twice. First at the amount of time it took for the etching: it was about 30 minutes. I don't think that the photo details have got anything to do with it but it surely seemed like a long time. Labeling process will be quicker if you confine the label on the inner radius of the optical media. The next surprise was at the professional and slick look of it. I was impressed by the sharp detail even though it was a monochromatic image on the disc's gold surface.(source)