San Jose (CA) - Samsung today announced what the company claims to be the world’s first 18x DVD rewriteable drive that connects to a PC via Serial ATA (SATA). The interface provides the WriteMaster SH-S183L with a bandwidth of up to up to 600 MB/s, which makes it one of the fastest drives available today.

Actual data transfer speeds, of course, are limited by sustained read and write speeds of the drive. Samsung said that the device supports all major DVD and CD media formats with 18X write speed (24.3 MB/s) only possible with DVD+R and DVD-R media. The maximum read speed in both cases is 12X (16.2 MB/s).

Other DVD formats are burned with 6X (DVD-RW), 8X (DVD+R DL, DVD+RW) and 12X (DVD-RAM). Read speeds range from 8X (DVD+R DL) to 16X (DVD-ROM).

The drive also integrates HP’s Lightscribe technology, which enables users to print images onto the surface of a DVD. The SH-S183L is available now for a suggested retail price of $90.