Lite-On has sent out a press release announcing 4 new DVD burners, no Blu-ray this time. Since DVD burners have pretty much become commodities every company is looking for functionality that differentiates their products from their competition. Therefore Lite-on didn't put much effort in convincing the press that their burner is the fastest burner ever, no they put the effort in explaining a feature that is unique to these burners called SmartErase.
With SmartErase users can erase the data on DVD±R (DL) and CD-R discs that contain confidential data and which should not be retrievable in any way. The feature works by overwriting the original data on the disc with random meaningless characters so that the original data can no longer be read by any drive.
Lite-On claims that once a disc is “SmartErased”, you don’t have to worry about someone accessing the confidential data that used to be stored on the disc. Where other techniques as shredding or breaking a disc, or throw it in the waste bin still have a potential risk of data recovering, SmartErase guarantees that data will be erased permanently.
To make the technology easy to use, the SmartErase function will be implemented in Nero 7 Essentials, the software package that will be bundled with the DVD writers. Users who want to erase their disc, can simply select the application in the Nero screen and can then choose between two erasing strategies:
Quick Erase only erases the information stored in the Lead-in area and data stored on the first track of the disc. As a result, a drive can not read the disc anymore, but with data recovery software there is a chance that some data can still be recovered from the parts of the disc that have not been overwritten.
Full Erase overwrites the complete disc. It takes more time then a “Quick
Erase”, but all the data will be permanently erased.
Lite-On will release 4 different 22X DVD writers with SmartErase functionality. The iHAP322 with PATA connection, the iHAP422 with PATA connection and LightScribe, the iHAS322 with an SATA connection and the iHAS422 with an SATA connection and LightScribe. All DVD writers will be available in September / October 2008.
