Is my DVD writer a +, -, or combination? (1 Viewer)

[Jon_Are]

How do I find out this information, short of buying blanks of each and trying them? The drive is an HP 300n and it came pre-installed on my HP PC. The 300n is not listed on the HP support site.

I've emailed HP, but have not yet heard back from them.

The computer is just four months old, if that makes any difference.

Thanks,

Jon

 

[Brian E]

While the machine may say it's a 300n, this seems to indicate it's actually a 300i.
http://www.dvdrhelp.com/forum/archive/t193811.html

 

[Edison Tinker]

You can go to THIS SITE and download the freeware application...it's designed to tell you what formats are supported by your drive...

 

[NickSo]

the HP300n is a DVD+R/RW drive, not -...

All HP drives are + i believe

 

[Jon_Are]

Problem resolved, thank to all.

Jon

 

[Jeff Jacobson]

There are also some drives that can be upgraded to ± drives via firmware. (I don't know if your's is one of them, though.)

Doom9.org had some news items listed last month about this.

 

[NickSo]

I have the 300i as well, and from what i've read, its non upgradeable (HP is a supporter of +RW, but the drive is supposedly a rebaged NEC IIRC).

The great tthing about your (our) drive is that you can set the bitsetting to burn both +r/+rw as DVD-ROM, so when a DVD player reads it, it doesnt see it as a +R/RW disc, it sees it as a DVD-ROM disc. This was great when i found out i could use my DVD Player (which is incompatible wtih ANY burned media) to play my DVD+R's bitset to DVD-Rom