Lucky Goldstar gets sort of lucky re-writing things

---

Product: LG GSA-H55N 20x Super Multi Security DVD Rewriter
Website: www.lge.com/GSA-H55N
System Requirements: Windows Me, Vista x32, x64, 2000 Pro, XP Home, Pro, Media Centre Edition. Pentium III 1Ghz or higher, 256MB or higher
Price: £24.99 - PCWORLD

---

THIS IS the long-awaited, latest and fastest drive from the LG-Hitachi partnership. Latest, as it's the newest, long-awaited as in we've been eagerly awaiting its arrival. Fastest as it's the quickest DVD burner from them. Why have we been looking forward to it? It's mainly because of the built-in security technology by Nero.

LG GSA-H55N

The LG GSA-H55N is their 20x internal DVD burner, as seen above. Unfortunately it's only E-IDE (ATAPI) based; we expected to see S-ATA as most of the drives wandering across our desk these days are. Accompanying the drive is a CD with all the software needed. The software is the very key in SecurDisc. As it's both a hardware and software based security technology which has been jointly developed by LG and Nero.

SecurDisc is solely used through Nero Express 7, exclusively at this time. It enables a high level of security to be attached to burning of a disc, where previously there have been none. This provides for the very first time protection for data on both CDs and DVDs. It's all done by affixing passwords, digital signatures and copy protection to the media.

Nero Express 7 - SecurDisc Features

Passwords are at minimum 16 characters long, added at the time of burning the disc. It's a strong enough level for most. That's for both personal data and even business critical stuff. This prevents, as you can guess, unauthorised access to any of the content.

Each DVD/CD that's burnt can be encrypted with a unique digital signature, in order to guarantee its authenticity and the integrity of the disc. Just adding a secondary level of protection, as digital rights have always been a favourite in terms of security why not have them on CD and DVDs.

The final level of SecurDisc ability is "copy protection". Just as before all can be handled by Nero at the burning stage, enabling the contents to be prohibited from duplication. Sadly, although this sounds a good feature it's only limited to PDF documents.

Data reliability along with data integrity checks are also features of SecurDisc, but all behind the scenes. The first is redundancy storage technology; data being burned is duplicated in spare space on the media. All to increase the possibility of restoring the data on the disc if it's damage, much the same way as RAID. The other tech is where the CD/DVD is automatically checked to see if written data has been altered through decay, allowing users to back up vital information before it becomes unreadable.

With CDs and DVDs becoming easily scratched, this is one of the most useful features we've seen in DVD burning since "buffer underrun" came about.

As far as we can see, nothing like any of this has ever been around before and it's long overdue in our opinion.

SecurDisc Digital Signature created

In creating SecurDisc based media, the first step is the digital signature. This is generated and automatically saved, which can then be email on to the recipient of the disc. This is followed by the password creation and then the disc is ready for writing. It's all rather painless and uncomplicated anyway, giving me the notion that this should be done for all media in future and not just data-sensitive ones.

SecurDisc Password created

The only qualm we had here is that all of this is performed from the Nero Express front end. This has always been, in our minds, the very basic user-friendly version of Nero. The more technically minded folk out there always tend to go straight for the Nero Burning Rom application. This doesn't have any of these features available at this time.

Needed for viewing, using and accessing the contents of SecurDisc CD/DVDs is Nero InCD. This is their lite application allowing you to use write-once and rewritable discs like an external hard drive. Also it provides the drag-and-drop ability for copying and modifying files directly onto discs. It's a part of the software on the CD, but if the disc is being passed on it's only a small and free download. It's worth noting here that another CD/DVD-ROM with SecurDisc isn't needed, just this software.

What's extremely disconcerting and a tad worrying is that the contents of the media can be seen and accessed from the outset, as seen below. Even the whole directory structure is visible and searchable. This is all without InCD even being installed, the password confirmed or even the digitally sign disc verified. For security this isn't best way forward for any kind of confidence in our opinion.

Ideally we would have liked to have seen the CD or DVD inaccessible here. Or at the very least having the file names, directories and titles scrambled.

You're allowed to access any file at this stage, although the actual contents of which are scrambled and deliberately corrupted by SecurDisc.

SecurDisc burnt DVD

As seen above, the password is needed when you first access the SecurDisc. From here you can now access all of its contents. We would have thought the digital signature would have been needed too, for full access. No, it's just required for the user/recipient of the disc to validate for peace of mind the authentic nature of its source.

We benchmarked the performance of the drive using Nero CD-DVD Speed. This was based on an old Dell 630sc, Pentium IV 3Ghz based machine as that was all we had available to us at the time.

Nero Create Disc Testing

It gets the 20x claim using Verbatim 16x media accompanying the drive. As with all CLV based burners, it accelerates to that speed over time and eventually achieves it. Don't be put off that it only finally got there at the end, it's supposed to.

In Short
There are a few 20x DVD burners now on the market, from HP, Lite-on and Samsung. How this drive stands out from them is the SecurDisc technology. LG are obviously banking on this to be their niche to drive sales as writing speeds are much of a muchness. On its first iteration we can see the solid usefulness of the technology, perhaps a wider range of platforms will be the next thing to aim for. As currently the tech is only found on the Windows version of Nero.

The Good
Fast DVD writer, SecurDisc

The Bad
Functions limited to only Nero Express

The Ugly
No S-ATA connection, limited platform support

Bartender's Report