|
|
Burn baby burn, compact disc RW inferno!Jun 25 '00 Write an essay on this topic.I've been dealing with CD-R and CD-R/W drives for the last 4 or 5 years. When they first premiered, one of my high school buddies picked up a 2x SCSI (cost about 700-800$ then) drive. After graduating, my roommate purchased a drive for his system and let me use it whenever I wanted (for the first few months). Most recently however, my girlfriend's mom wanted me to go down and pick her up a CD recorder drive for her computer so she could offload large graphics files (document/graphic scans). So away I went to search the net, and again I found the best deal at CostCo (physical store, not the online one). They currently have quite a good selection, including the HP 9300i (10x record speed!), a RICOH CDRW/DVD (only a 6x record, but this sucker can read DVD discs!) and a TDK 8x/4x/24x (write/rewrite/read). I purchased the TDK for her (figuring that the 70$ more for the HP 9300i wasn't really needed in her case). Then came time for installation. I've been messing with computers since I was a kid. I grew up with them, from an IBM PCjr, to a Tandy 1000HD, 286s, 386s and up, I've been fascinated with them. Installation of the TDK was a true breeze. It was an IDE drive (meaning it's compatible with every system out there) and in less than 10 minutes it was up and done with. I'm writing this opinion here to help out you guys who may not have as much computer experience, because the one thing I hate is people that pay 50-100$ at computer stores for simple installation of stuff like CD-Rs or RAM. How to choose a CD/R drive Ok, you want one of these drives so you can burn cd's. Well first check your system, can it handle one of these drives? My recommendation is to have at least a Pentium-233 MMX processor and at the bare minimum 64 MB of RAM (a better system would be a >=350 MHz and 128 MB RAM). The reason for the somewhat steep RAM requirements is simple. When a CD recorder is burning a CD, data needs to be written at a specific rate. If the CPU gets bogged down for any reason (say a scheduled task pops up or a screen saver kicks in) and the CDR can't write at the minimum speed, the compact disc is toast. Now that you've checked your system, its time to check drives. Almost all CD recorders support CD-RW technology. CD-RW discs are more exepensive to buy (5-6$/disc) and aren't really that useful (in my personal experience). Basically it allows you to use a CD like a mini-hard drive where you can write files, delete files, etc. No big whoop, since an extra 650 MB isn't all that useful, plus the discs aren't compatible in most CD-ROMS that are out there. A good CD-R/W drive should be at least a 4x write (I recommend 8x). A 4x burner will take 18 minutes to burn a whole CD, compared with 9 for an 8x. Most drives can be bought for around 200$ and use the IDE interface. SCSI drives are more reliable, but it will cost you an extra 200$ for a SCSI card and they are much harder to install. Also, if you want a cool option, there is a RICOH drive that is a 6x recorder **AND** plays DVD discs but it will cost you--almost 300$. Ok, now you have your drive, here's how to install it Easy as pie. Make sure you have a free 5.25" bay on your system. Open your case, slide the drive in and plug in the 4 pin power cable. Here's the only tricky part: the CD drive should be a Master. [Quick explanation: for the IDE interface there are 2 main ribbon cables running off the motherboard. Each of these can connect 2 drives (hard drive or CD drive or whatever). One of these is the master, one is the slave] The reason the CD drive wants to be the master is because it runs faster that way. If you have a slower drive as the master, you'll experience bottle necks--meaning more coasters instead of good CDs. What's great about IDE is that most drives support a Cable Select option (you'll see on the back of each CD drive a little jumper with M, S, CSel). My advice for most setups is to run the cable as so: IDE Cable 1: CD-R=master, CD drive=slave IDE Cable 2: fastest hard drive=master, slower=slave It's easier if you want to pull out your old CD-ROM drive, especially if it's slower than the read speed on your new CDR. If you are out of space, (ie-4 hard drives) you may want to consider pulling a small older hard drive out (as you can currently buy 40 GB /7200RPM drives for sub 300$) or go to the SCSI interface. OR you can always get an external drive for your system (but it will cost you). Hope this helps, the installation should be a breeze and quite painless.  |
| Read all comments (1)|Write your own comment |
|
Ads by Google
|
