dbminter Posted 1 hour ago Posted 1 hour ago The Buffalo MediaStation BR-XL 16U3 Version 1.3.0 is a USB 3.0 external Blu-Ray XL burner with an LG BH16NS58 drive inside it. The installed firmware version is 1.03 and appears to be the latest one available. It passed all tests I threw at it except for the one fatal deal killer. So, I'll only list the drawbacks. Wrote 8x to Verbatim DataLife Plus Mistubishi MKM 8x DVD+R DL. HOWEVER, it did NOT do it for very long! The Average Write rate was only 4.4x! No bombing out at the layer change on Write or Verify, though! The deal killer is writing to CD's; it basically doesn't! If the image size is under 100 MB, writing is fine. I tried an 800 MB CD Audio image and it NEVER wrote to ANY CD-R or CD-RW due to a semaphore timeout has expired issue. This was on Verbatim DataLife Plus CD-R that were big enough to hold the image and several 24x Memorex CD-RW. A 500 MB test I attempted to write failed to complete due to an invalid write address error. And those burns that did start and complete only wrote to 16x on 24x rated CD-RW media. Bottom line is, PASS on this drive unless you NEVER intend to write to CD's. Now, my unit was sold Used - Like New. I am in the process of getting a New unit and see if that improves the CD writing capability. However, I hold out little hope. The CD issue is most likely a bad firmware one and, thus, present in ALL units of this model.
Recommended Posts