On the box, it says that the drive supports 12x writing, 10x rewriting and 32x reading. Supported recording format are Orange Book Parts 2 and 3, Track at Once, Disc at Once, Fixed Packet and Variable Packet.

Using Adaptec's Easy CD Creator 4 and Nero Burning ROM 5 to check the drive's properties, I gathered the following screenshots.

Adaptec's Easy CD Creator 4 screenshot

Nero Burning ROM screenshot

As you can see from the screenshots, Lite-On is very confident with the BURN-Proof technology and took a step backwards in terms of cache buffer. The drive only has a 2MB cache buffer while most 12X CD-RW drives are usually equipped with 4 to 8MB of cache buffer! Is BURN-Proof really that good? What is the big deal anyway? Well, we'll soon find out.

Another nice feature of the drive is that it supports overburning. Also, a check of Lite-On's website revealed a new LS22 firmware revision that enables the drive to support CD cloning! The test sample that we received only came with the LS17 firmware. Future drives, however, may carry the LS22 firmware, and therefore support cloning right out of the box.

The drive also supports the session-at-once recording format; unlike my HP 9100i drive.

Flashing the Lite-On 12x10x32x CD-RW with the newer firmware was easy. With the likes of Windows 2000 and Windows ME, pure DOS is no longer a boot option for users. Therefore, Lite-On took things one step further from some competitors by introducing a Flash Update utility that works in the Windows environment! Just simply download the update file and run the exe. Just as simple as that.

Here are some more screenshots of the Update utility.

First, the warning screen will appear. Just click Yes to continue. Of course, close all other applications first just in case they interfere with the flashing process.