Panasonic (Matshita) UJ-845
Notebooks are not usually big on upgrade potential. The parts are difficult to obtain, are generally more expensive, and people are nervous about opening up an expensive piece of equipment.
One of the few upgrades paths is the optical drive. Typically a notebook will have a CD burner, possibly with DVD reading capabilities. The latest notebooks will undoubtedly contain a DVD burner, but the great majority will be lacking this feature. Enter the Panasonic UJ-845!
Marketed as an OEM drive, the UJ-845 is unlikely to be found in retail stores. However it is easily purchased from any number of websites, and for a surprisingly reasonable cost, especially considering that is dual-layer, slot-loading, and supports DVD-RAM. That’s good going even by desktop standards.
For the purposes of this review, an Acer Travelmate 800 was used as the test notebook, replacing its standard QSI CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive.
Description & capabilities
The drive is a standard 12.7mm notebook unit that should fit most notebooks. It is also suitable for appropriate SFF PCs, and could be used in conjunction with the right housing to provide a slim line external DVD burner.
The official capabilities of the drive are:
- 5X Speed DVD-RAM Writing
- 8X Speed DVD-R Writing
- 4X Speed DVD-RW Writing
- 24X Speed CD-R Writing
- 16X Speed CD-RW Writing
- 8X Speed DVD+R Writing
- 4X Speed DVD+RW Writing
- 24X Speed CD-ROM Reading
- 8X Speed DVD-ROM Reading
- Buffer Under Run Protection
- +R Dual Layer Writing
Nero InfoTool gives the following report on the capabilities of the drive:
| Drive: | MATSHITA DVD-RAM UJ-845S |
|---|---|
| Type: | DVD-RAM Recorder |
| Firmware Version: | D100 |
| Buffer Size: | 2 MB |
| Date: | 01-11-05 |
| Location: | 1:0 |
| Read Speed: | 6.0 X |
| Write Speed: | 4.0 , 2.4 X |
| Read CD Text: | Yes |
| Return C2 Pointers: | Yes |
| Read CD-R: | Yes |
| Read CD-RW: | Yes |
| Read DVD-ROM: | Yes |
| Read DVD-RAM: | Yes |
| Read DVD-R: | Yes |
| Read DVD-RW: | Yes |
| Read DVD+R: | Yes |
| Read DVD+RW: | Yes |
| Read DVD+R DL: | Yes |
| Read Digital Audio: | Yes |
| Read CD+G: | No |
| Read VideoCD: | Yes |
| Write CD-R: | Yes |
| Write CD-RW: | Yes |
| Write DVD-R: | Yes |
| Write DVD-RW: | Yes |
| Write DVD+R: | Yes |
| Write DVD+RW: | Yes |
| Write DVD+R DL: | Yes |
| Write DVD-RAM: | Yes |
| Buffer Underrun Protection: | Yes |
| Mount Rainier: | No |
| Modes: | Packet, TAO, DAO, SAO, RAW SAO |
| Region Protection Control: | RPC II |
Basically, the drive supports almost every format you could possible want! Note the difference in what Panasonic believe is the drive speed, and what Nero reports.
Comments (page 13 of 16)
Apr 26, 2007 11:08 am
Toshiba Satellite M115-S3094, fussy about what audio cds (factory) it wants to read. Two months old. Have not tested DVDs, speed etc lately. See a pattern here.
Apr 6, 2007 11:19 am
I have the matshita dvd ram UJ-845S and I popped in a game disc today and nothing happens,I went into device manager and its showing this message now,
Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The driver may be corrupted or missing. (Code 39)
Does anyone know where to get the driver for this model from as I have looked everywhere and cannot find it and I cant find my support cd either to see if it is on there,
Any help much appreciated,
Thanks
Mar 28, 2007 7:16 pm
Sheez - what a bunch of whiners! Here's the scoop: if you cheap out and buy a crappy Windows PC like an Acer, don't complain it it's a piece of crap. DUH! Do you buy a Hyundai and cry becuiase it's not a Lexus too.?!Ya get what u pay for - Windows SUCKS! BTW - i have one of these drives in my Mac and it works just fine thank you.
Mar 17, 2007 6:31 pm
I bought at november 2005 acer aspire 5024 which had the 845D drive with D100.it didn't write DVD-R,it said "dynamic alignment error"(it's a translation of what greek nero showed, so i'm not sure about how accurate it is) and it wrote DVD R at 2.4x true speed,although nero said 8x.a few days ago it started not writing DVD Rs too,showing the same error message.I used tdk before and now.As i understood, there is no firmware update available.So the only thing i can do is buying a new drive?
Mar 3, 2007 4:49 pm
Have been reading all your posts and seems all having problems with matshita ddrives UJ 845.
I had a similar issues, the drive would not read cd-r. I have an Acer 1692 and UJ-845D D100 firmware. I did manage to Flash the drive to UJ-845S D100 using firware from rpc1 using the slave setting. Managed to get the DVD RAM function working but did not solve the issue with Reading CD-Rs. The only solution I found was to remove the drive and its cover and take a blower to it. This worked. It seems these drives are very sensitive to dust hence the reason why all experiance problems just after a few months. Hope this helps
Feb 24, 2007 6:52 pm
MATSHITA UJ-845D....Can this burner not read the graphics on a Cd-g? I apparently can't copy with it.
Feb 13, 2007 9:23 pm
I bought a Acer1692 2 years ago that came with the Mashita uj-845d drive and it started to give that "power calibration error" on nero some weeks ago. i kind of ignore it, but now when i put a empty dvd into the drive it doesn't even recognize it! it acts as if there were no dvd at in the drive! i'm getting bored with this, since i can't play or burn cds and dvds anymore, and that sucks! is there anyway i can fix it? or maybe just buy a new one? how much would it cost to get a new drive with the same features as this one?
Feb 6, 2007 3:35 am
I do have ANYDVD running the drive so maybe is it this?? it gets rather annoying...maybe im just better buying another DVD drive that actually plays DVDS!
Feb 6, 2007 3:32 am
Hey guys, I have a Acer 4000 with the MATSHITA UJ-845S drive in it too, the drive reguarly dissapears from My Computer and cuts out half-way through playing DVD's. Anyway to fix this?
Jan 31, 2007 4:52 am
Bought a Toshiba Tecra A7 in December with the UJ-841S. Drive will read and play DVDs OK but will not read or play Audio CDs - it just whirrs abd clicks and when you click on Properties for the drive, it reports "Device I/O error"??????
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