You may have heard people advising you to update your DVD burner’s firmware. But why and how should you do this? And what’s firmware anyway? Read on…

Firmware is the software built in to many modern electronic devices. In the case of your burner, this includes information on how to burn and read DVDs (and CDs), how to get the best performance from them, what settings to use, and so on.

Disc technology evolves, and products with improved performance and new dyes are always coming onto the market. Newer firmware will often include improved settings to get the best and most reliable burning results with these latest discs. Disc compatibility problems are frequently caused by drives with older firmware not being aware of particular issues with newer media.

Some firmware upgrades may also give minor improvements to the drive’s specification (at no extra cost to you!) or fix minor bugs that were present in earlier versions.

How to update your firmware

Most drives’ firmware can be updated via a small program run on your PC. If available, this can normally be downloaded from the drive manufacturer’s website, typically the “Support” section.

Always make sure that you have downloaded the correct updater for your specific drive and model number. Although some update programs will check that the correct drive is installed, you should not assume that this is the case. Updating your burner with incorrect firmware may damage the drive. As well as this, make sure that the power is not turned off during the update.

The firmware updater will normally come with some instructions. Read these before you run it!

Don’t let this scare you off though- firmware update is typically a quick and painless process that takes a few minutes and results in an improved drive and more reliable burning for you!