Important Facts to Know About CD-R and CDRW Drives Before You Buy
Dec 17 '00 (Updated Jan 23 '01)
The Bottom Line When looking to purchase a CD burner it's important to have some knowledge of what you're lookng for. Don't buy the fastest/most expensive thinking it's the best.
Here we are in the days of "burn your own CDs", but there are some important and otherwise misunderstood facts involved in buying the right drive for your needs. Most people who are looking for a CD burner are looking to create their own music CDs and backup important data. It is also nice to back up your installation CDs for your expensive games and software. Many people dive into the CDRW craze with little to no knowledge on what makes a good CDRW.
Many people think the most important factor is the speed of the writer. The speed is a determining factor indeed, but there is much more to it than that. After all, what good is a 16X speed CD burner if you can't copy your installation CDs for backup? It is nice to be able to create a full 650MB CD in less than 6 minutes but if it doesn't burn correctly it is useless. Before you dive into the CDRW world, take this review into account when browsing through the vast field of drives on the market.
Creating Your Own Music CDs
For people looking to make their own music CDs, almost all the burners out to date will perform admirably for this task provided you adhere to a few simple rules. First of all, copying a music CD in full is most easily done by first ripping the CD down to MP3 format. To get the best quality (identical to the CD quality) you will want to create the MP3 files at a 256k or higher bit-rate. Then you can convert the files back to CD audio format when burning to the CD. Most CD burning software will support this now. Before you buy a burner for music, check the software that comes with it to make sure you can make CDs in this fashion. Some common titles that support this type of CD creation are Adaptec EZ CD Creator (version 4.0 or higher), Nero Burning Rom (version 5.0 or higher) and NTI CD Maker. The reason I suggest making your music CDs this way is to keep from having to change CDs while burning, being able to write in "Disk at once" mode and to lessen the chance of a buffer underrun.
What is a Buffer Underrun?
The term buffer underrun is somewhat over used and widely misunderstood. Lately I have heard many people blame just about all CD creation errors on buffer underruns. A buffer underrun is, literally, when the memory buffer runs out of information before the CD or the track is finished. If the memory buffer runs out of data, the CD can't write, therefor when you try to copy a CD directly from disk to disk you could experience this error if...
1) Your CD reader cannot extract the digital information as fast as your burner can write it.
2) Your CD reader is not very good at error correcting or takes several reads to correct errors.
3) Your CD writer has a small memory buffer (1 megabyte or less).
4) Your CD reader and burner are on the same IDE cable and you are copying a CD directly from the reader to the writer.
If you are planning to install a CD-R/CDRW drive, it is best to put the burner on a separate cable than the reader if you want to copy directly from CD to CD-R/CDRW. The reason is because on an IDE controller, only one drive can be active at a time so your reader will read then stop and your writer will write then stop back and forth until the burn is completed. This is just asking for a buffer underrun error. When they are installed on separate cables they are on separate controllers and your reader can continuously read while the burner writes with much less chance of an error. It is still my recommendation to copy to hard drive first to eliminate any chance of error. In that case you would want your burner on the opposite cable from your hard drive for the same reason.
If you are planning to make music CDs, you must make sure that your CD reader or, if you are using the CD-R/CDRW drive for reading to disk, the CD-R/CDRW drive is capable of extracting digital audio. You should also take into account that just because the drive says it can write at 12X and read at 32X does not mean it will extract digital audio at those speeds. Most CDROM/CD-R/CDRW drives will only extract digital audio at a maximum of 8X. Another important fact is that if you use CDRW disks to make music CDs, you may not be able to play them in all CD devices. The CD player you use to play music burned on CDRW disks must be a multi-read CD device. If you use CD-R disks, you will most likely be able to play your music CDs on any CD player or CD device.
Making Data CDs
If you are making a data CD from data off the hard drive, you should be able to do this with any CD-R/CDRW drive on the market. Since you are copying files off the hard drive, a buffer underrun is almost impossible if you have a decent buffer size on the burner. But if you plan to use the drive to back up your installation CDs, this is where the field narrows vastly and you should know a little more about the drive you are looking to purchase.
In order to copy installation CDs, you will need a burner that can read sub-channel data from data tracks and sub-channel audio from audio tracks. The reason is, to be able to copy CDs that have been Copyright Protected you must be able to read the sub-channel information or the CD you burn will be useless. For example, if you want to make a back up of your copyright protected game but your CD burner doesn't read sub-channel data, you could possibly burn the entire disk and have the program tell you it was created successfully and even be able to use the burned disk to install the software. But when you go to use the disk to play that game, you will get a message that says, "Please insert the correct CDROM and restart the program". This is most annoying and can be infuriating.
Another important thing to know before buying a CD burner to back up copyrighted material, is that you must have software that supports RAW writing. The CD burner you choose must also support this type of writing or you will wind up with disks like the one described above. The two software titles I have used successfully for this purpose are CloneCD and Nero Burning Rom. You must also keep in mind which software you want to use. CloneCD is probably the best but it does not support all CD burners. Before buying, you may want to download the trial version of the software you plan to use and find out which devices it will support. Most importantly, remember that you are allowed by law to make 1(one) working copy of copyrighted software that you have a license for solely for back up purposes. Copying software for trading or for selling is a federal offense and can land you some serious jail time if you get caught.
To date, I have found these three combinations of CD burners and software to be infallible in writing music and data as well as copying copyrighted material for back up purposes.
1) Plextor 8X20 CD-R used with CloneCD version 2.8.3.1 (for copying CDs) and Nero Burning Rom version 5.0 (for music and data)
2) TDK VeloCD 12X10X32 CDRW with CloneCD version 2.8.3.1 (for copying CDs) and Nero Burning Rom version 5.0 (for music and data)
3) Hewlett Packard 9510i 12X8X32 CDRW used with CloneCD version 2.8.3.1 (for copying CDs) and Nero Burning Rom version 5.0 (for music and data)
I hope this helps you find what you need for your CD burning purposes. Good luck and thanks for reading.
Gr8ful :-)
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
© 1999-2010 Shopping.com, Inc.