Buyer's Guide: Twice the Speed
For Just $10 More! Six CD-RW Drives Compared
4-5-02 When
they first came out, the price of CD burners (upwards of $1,500!)
relegated them to the realm of uber-geeks and companies looking
for a reliable backup solution. Prices were high enough to
keep casual users from taking the plunge. Thankfully, CD burners
have dropped in price enough to bring them within reach of
home consumers. As burn speeds have increased over time, prices,
thankfully, have not. A top of the line 32x10x40 drive currently
costs about $200, less than you would have paid for a 8x4x24
a few years ago. It appears that 16x10x40 drives are on their
way out. 32x10x40 are quickly replacing them at essentially
the same price point. In fact, the QPS 32x drive is less expensive
than their 16x drive!
Several of the drives below use a technology dubbed "burn-proof"
that helps prevent buffer underrun errors which result in
a useless disk. Burn-proof safely pauses the burn process
if the drive's built in buffer is close to empty, giving it
time to refill before continuing.
All of the Drives below sport a FireWire interface for speedy
transfers. The LaCie drives allow greater flexibility with
the inclusion of USB 2.0 as well. Given the limited bus speed,
USB burns are restricted to 4x4x6. Apple has yet to adopt
USB 2.0, but the spec is backward compatible with USB 1.1.
Using the LaCie CD-RW with your Mac's USB port will work,
it just won't break any speed limits...
Whether you are looking for a backup solution or a way to
create your own custom mix audio CD's, a FireWire CD-RW drive
will get the job done in record time. With MP3 compression
you can fit roughly 10 CD's worth of music onto one disk.
CD's can store roughly 700 MB of data or 80 minutes of non
compressed audio. The drives' speed varies by function, write,
rewrite and read. Rewrite speeds are generally the slowest
as time must be spent resmoothing the disk surface to its
(more or less) original state.
Below we provide you with the specs on several models and
as with all of our Buyer's
Guides, we have scoured the web and tracked down the lowest
prices for you. If you have comments on the drives mentioned
below or one we didn't cover in this guide, post them on our
discussion board below.
For reviews of other drives not mentioned here, check out
our CD
reviews page. To join the CD-RW discussion, click
here.
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When
they first came out, the price of CD burners (upwards of $1,500!)
relegated them to the realm of uber-geeks and companies looking
for a reliable backup solution. Prices were high enough to
keep casual users from taking the plunge. Thankfully, CD burners
have dropped in price enough to bring them within reach of
home consumers. As burn speeds have increased over time, prices,
thankfully, have not. A top of the line 32x10x40 drive currently
costs about $200, less than you would have paid for a 8x4x24
a few years ago. It appears that 16x10x40 drives are on their
way out. 32x10x40 are quickly replacing them at essentially
the same price point. In fact, the QPS 32x drive is less expensive
than their 16x drive!
