Watch out if you try one of those 'beta' firmwares.

I have an NEC 3500A and flashed firmware 2F9 to it, to get
faster DVDrips, etc. The damn firmware was causing
intermittant errors which caused my system I/O to slow down
into PIO mode. Can a DVD drive cause a hard drives mode to
switch to PIO? I don't know, but since I flashed a non-
beta firmware to the DVD drive, I've had no problems with
my hard drive.