To PLEXTOR or not to PLEXTOR???

[Guest]

Hi everyone.

I am in the market for a cd-rw. I don't have one presently, nor have I ever had one. So it is definitely time for me to get one. I've been studying up on them for a week or two, and this Plextor keeps coming up on top.

I have a Dell Dimension XPS R350, w/a PII 350, 128 MB SDRAM. I am about to upgrade to a PIII 1 GHz. I don't really know if this has anything to do with a cd-rw, but my question is this:

For a PII 350, is the plextor 12X10X32 a good cd-rw? And if there is anything wierd about it, please inform me here too. I know there is a plextor 16X10X40 out now, but that is a bit too expensive for me right now.

Also, should I get the Atapi or SCSI version? I know they say the SCSI is faster, but is it worth the extra expense??? And if it really is that much better, would down-grading to the 32X12X4 SCSI be a bad choice???

Thanks for all and any help.

Jack

 

[Guest]

Hmmm...I'm assuming that you've read the replies to my question about the plextor 16x...if not, you should, as they really were quite helpful.

Beyond that, I checked C-net shopper for prices on both the 12x...and the 16x, and found that there is only a $30 price difference. I'm planning on ordering mine (a 16x) today, I'll try and let you know, through this thread, anything that might benifit you in the installation process (in addition to the excellent advice given me in my own thread) Good luck...

"A house divided against itself"...pretty much sucks as an investment opportunity.

 

[NarN]

Got one yesterday, it's a 161040A.

Installed it in 5 minutes as master on IDE1.

Runs very well on my kt7a-raid, TB 900MHz, 256MB, Maxtor HDD.

--
NarN - Ruling the world

 

[Guest]

The Plextor 121032A is a good cdrw drive even for my Pentium 200MMX

The best way to fight boredom is sleeping

 

[Guest]

Sanyo, Plextor and Teac use Sanyo's Burn Proof technology, which is tested and very good. Yamaha (the latest model 20x...) uses the "just Link" technology, which is quite new. I'd prefer Plextor. The best cd-writers in the market.
stark

Blue Skies Bring Tears

 

[Toejam31]

The Plextor SCSI drive is no faster than the IDE ... in fact, it may be slightly slower. I recall seeing some independent tests on both drives, and I was surprised to see the IDE drive beat the SCSI drive in the write test, even though the SCSI drive was connected to an Adaptec 29160n controller card. That bothered me, because that was my setup at the time!

Something to consider is that neither the SCSI, nor the IDE 12/4/32 drives support BURN-Proof. This was not implemented into the drives until the 12/10/32 series.

Believe me, you DO want Burn-Proof, regardless of the interface you choose. But if it comes down to money, IDE is cheaper, and just as fast. Go ahead and spend the extra cash on the 16/10/40 instead of a SCSI controller ... it will save a PCI slot, and you'll be very happy with it.

Toejam31



<font color=purple>If there was a reason for everything, having faith would be redundant.</font color=purple>

 

[Guest]

The main advantage of SCSI burners is not supposed to be speed. It's the SCSI bus, because it is not CPU-dependent. If you're copying from SCSI to SCSI, you don't even need to worry about burnproof. Buffer underruns will never happen, no matter what you're running at your system at the same time. But... only if both the source and the target are SCSI.

Leo

 

[Toejam31]

You are correct, LeoKor. It's true that the SCSI bus is is not CPU-dependent. But there is a definite advantage to the drive having BURN-Proof. Certain brands of media will cause a SCSI CD-RW to operate at variable speeds in order to keep from burning a coaster. This is especially true when using media bought in bulk.

Very recently, using combination of Nero and a SCSI 12/4/32 Plexwriter, I found that when using Memorex media, the drive would refuse to burn at 12x, and instead, would shift the burn speed to 10x or 8x in order to avoid buffer underruns. This was with half the system memory devoted to the process, which was 256MB out of 512MB ... and despite being on an independent bus.

Of course, since both the hard drive and CD-RW were SCSI, the drive was not going to produce a coaster ... but the fact remains that the burn process could not run at full speed except for a short time due to the media quality. This lengthened the time needed to burn the disk, and negated the reason for purchasing a CD-RW of this speed and quality, including a SCSI controller for connecting the drive.

Interestingly enough, the drive would burn at full speed when using Easy CD Creator 3.5, regardless of the type of media used ... but I also found evidence of data corruption on the CD's afterwards, but the problem was intermittent.

Of course, using a different brand of media would be the immediate response for a "fix" ... but it's kinda pointless to throw away 500 CD-R's, don't you think? Even at current prices. And the basic reason for upgrading to a fast CD-RW is for faster burning speeds, correct?

This is one of reasons that the BURN-Proof technology is now being incorporated into SCSI drives, as well as IDE drives. The other being that SCSI CD-RWs are sometimes used in combination with regular IDE hard drives.

Comments?

Toejam31

<font color=purple>If there was a reason for everything, having faith would be redundant.</font color=purple>

 

[Guest]

No comments. Thanks for an excellent explanation.

Leo

 

[CALV]

In addition to Leaokor's comments about not getting a bufferunderrun, my setup is scsi, and as said, going disk to disk is a breeze and I can happily play UT/surf/whatever whilst burning, BUT thats from a "normal" cd. anything that is scratched, has protection etc WILL cause the flow of data to slow down and give an underrun. Ive never used a burnproof, I got mine when SCSI cdrw's were a lot better than IDE's. If I were to start over, I'd seriously consider an IDE setup, but of course it also depends on the rest of your system, ok, a scsi card takes up a pci slot, but 2 cd drives (reader and writer) takes up 2 ide channels....


Next time you wave - use all your fingers

 

[Toejam31]

Or you could use a PCI IDE controller card, and that would give you a lot more options when upgrading.

Just a thought.

Toejam31

<font color=purple>If there was a reason for everything, having faith would be redundant.</font color=purple>

 

[Guest]

I am purchasing a Plex 16x10x40 for two reasons. One, I have two friends with them who have been burning since the very beginning, and they swear by it. Secondly, unlike most other drives out there, it supports ATA66 instead of 33. With the new boards having ATA100 standard, it sucks to have your CD drives running at a paltry ATA33. Im going to pair this with the ASUS 12X DVD drive which is the only DVDROm which I know to be ATA66 as well. Perhaps there are more that I dont know about but i've been searching for a while and after seeing apps install on a system with an ATA66 DVDROM, im sold. Living here in illinois I am in driving distance to 2 superior vendors, www.pcprogress.com, and www.spartantech.com. The prices for the 16x10x40 is $209 and $207 respectivley. Hope this helps.

Its big, purple and women love it!(ATX case w/3 coats of purple Krylon and the AMD logo)