Samsung 22X DVD/RW SATA Drive SH-S223C/BEBE (Black)

This DVD drive is horrible. When I got it, It wouldn't read most games properly, i had to keep inserting and reinserting the disc in order to get it to read. One brand new disc didn't even read at all until I updated the firmware. When the next firmware update came out, It broke it again, and downgrading didn't work! The drive and laser weren't dirty either.

From new, the drive barely read any discs at all. Games would encounter read errors during installation or it would fail to recognise the disc entirely. CDs Read okay most of the time, but DVD reading was by far the worst I have seen on any drive.

You should never, ever use this drive to burn discs either. It will just fail. Burning readable discs is actually the exception rather than the norm. When I still had this drive I would transfer files I needed to burn over to my laptop and use that instead.

Avoid this drive, and if possible all other Samsung/Toshiba DVD drives. Go for something by LG or Sony. I've even got an 13 year old pioneer DVD drive that works much better than this thing does. The only reason I didn't swap this drive out for the pioneer was because the pioneer was IDE.

I finally stopped using this drive in February 2013 when my friend gave me a spare one he had. I was finally able to read the unreadable discs after that. I'm really tempted to smash this drive to pieces with a sledgehammer, but I've kept it as a spare purely on the basis it will read CDs most of the time. I can't believe I actually managed to put up with it for over 3 years.