The ROM Drive

There's only so much you can look at when it comes to a ROM drive. The main thing is that this drive comes in at the more conventional 178mm length as opposed to the shorter length of 170mm on our iHAS322. Since 178mm is the length case builders work off, it's hardly going to cause a problem anyway.

We can see out of the box the driver offers us a black face plate, but with a few pushes in the right spots you can replace that with the silver one that is included in the bundle as we saw on the last page.

On top of the drive we have all the standard information like model, manufactured date, serial number and all the official logos and warnings that you would expect to see from a ROM drive.

Looking head on, we've got the normal array of logos on the front which gives us an idea of what's supported. The main feature of course is Blu-ray, but as always we've got the standard DVD and CD support. To the left side we can also see the Lite-On logo.

Like most ROM drives these days, the iHES208 is connected and powered by SATA technology. This helps keep cable thickness down and has become the clear way to connect these days with the days of Parallel ATA long gone.

Specifications

When it comes to the specifications and comparing the model to our iHAS322 DVD-ROM drive, the numbers are quite similar. Re-write speeds to DVDs and CDs are 8x (DVD+) 6x (DVD-) and 32x (CD) respectively.

Read times on both drives are the same with 16x for DVDs and 48x for CDs. Where the iHAS322 has a win over the Blu-ray enabled iHES208 is in DVD write speeds with a 22x rating versus the 16x on offer from the iHES208.

The big feature for the iHES208 is of course the Blu-ray support. Single layers have a speed rating of 8x while dual layer discs have a slower 4x one.