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Several interesting things have happened since the first optical recorder was introduced years ago. Back then, hard drives were relatively small, and most motherboards would only support 2 IDE channels, and generally even a couple of 650MB CD-ROM disc was equivalent to 10% of your total HD space. Optical storage was a cheap, reliable, and portable way to backup, trade, and store your data. Today, the DVD Recorder is the favoured optical recording medium for data storage, but cheap HD prices, huge HD storage spaces, the rise of portable solid-state USB drives of truly useful sizes, and portable hard-drive enclosures have muddied the waters for those looking for portable storage. Even with these new options, DVD±R and DVD±RW are still very reasonable and very viable options that many have opted to adopt.

Today we're looking at 2 8X DVD Recorders from AOpen and Gigabyte. 8X Recorders are no longer the holders of the speed crown, but they're easily obtained, and priced competitively against the newer 12X and 16X devices. In some areas, you might even find 8X media a little tough to find, here in Vancouver, BC, 12X and 16X certified media isn't even available, period.

The Drives

The drives we're looking at are the Gigabyte GO-W0808A and the AOpen DRW8800 AAN, an 8x/4x/12x DVD+/-RWdrive. The design of the drives today are almost always identical. The AOpen drive is the standard of the two - it lacks even a headphones out jack. The Gigabyte comes with both the front headphones out and the volume control.

As you can see, specs wise the two drives are nearly twins. This isn't surprising since most drives today have nearly identical specifications, and even performance is very close.

Of note is the length of the Gigabyte GO-W0808A - this is one of the shortest drives I've seen before at only 16.8cm in length (the AOpen 8080AAN is 18.8cm). Comparing to CDROM drives from Liteon, Samsung, and MSI the WO-0808A is 1cm shorter than the average. This makes it a nice choice for Small Form Fact barebones and other slim pcs, or just about any situation where the fit is tight.

Gigabyte WO-0808A on Left.

For a more dramatic comparison check out the picture below of the Gigabyte installed in the Soltek Qbic EQ3801a, compared to an older Pioneer DVD-ROM (which measures a whopping 20.2cm in length). That's a really tight fit!

Below are the Nero Info Tool reports for each of the drives: