Pick a Drive for what you want to use it for!Apr 24 '01 (Updated Sep 08 '02) Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line Look for a drive that supports RAW DAO writing mode. SCSI better than IDE but harder install/more expensive. IDE drives may fight with other IDE devices. Choose software carefully.
About a year ago I saw a Phillips 8x4x32 cdrw drive on sale at best buy and I bought it. The Phillips is a good drive for data but as I found out a year later, not a good drive if you want to backup audio and or data cd's pressed commercially that have copy guard on them. I am not a pirate and I don't use my hardware to pirate cds but I am enough of a realist that I don't care to risk my cds that cost on the average of $15.00 a pop in my car cd player or on the road in my portable player-especially in the Florida heat. CD boxes are prime targets for petty thieves as they can easily be taken to a used cd shop and sold for a few dollars each; I'd rather only give the thieves some copies that they won't be able to sell, thanks very much! Many companies are beginning to put copy protection on their commercial audio and data cd's and you must have an excellent drive capable of writing in RAW DAO mode in order to have any hope of duplicating them. Unfortunately many products do not advertise the ability to write in RAW mode on the outside of the box. It's usually something that you must find out from a newsgroup or detailed product review. Some good sites that review hardware and software are as follows: http://www.music-software-reviews.com, http://www.studiohelp.com/cgi-studiohelp/ubb/Ultimate.cgi?action=intro&Bypas (Studio help bulletin board), http://hardware.mp3.com/hardware/, www.cdnet.com I have the very highly regarded Yamaha 2100EZ drive which is available in IDE (2100EZ), SCSI (2100ES) and firewire interfaces. From what I read in a review this drive is actually made by SONY. This drive, while it doesn't support burn proof, has a huge 8 meg buffer which more than makes up for the lack of the burn proof technology. There are also a couple of hewlett packard products that support RAW DAO writing mode. Basically if your drive supports RAW, you can copy just about any cd with the proper software. In addition to an excellent piece of hardware you must have a piece of software that is capable of error correction and duplicating the various copy schemes along with the audio/data. CloneCD, www.clone-cd.com is an excellent, easy to use product. CloneCD makes perfect copies of the copyguarded cd, it does not remove the copyguard. You can download a trial version of the product that will work for 21 days, the product is a bargain at $50.00. From reviews, this product will duplicate just about any cd you put in the drive. I've duplicated several of my cd collection that nothing else was able to copy without errors--I think this product is great. There are also companion products that work with CloneCD to detect the type of copyguard on the disk and make proper settings within CloneCD to make your duplication even more foolproof. CloneCD works with several different types of cd, not just audio cds. In addition to a product such as CloneCD, you'll need to pick a software package capable of performing other tasks such as converting to and from .mp3, creating compilations of your cd's, creating video cd's etc. Adaptec's software comes with the Yamaha drive but there are apparently some issues with the VIA chipset because I haven't been able to make anyting but coasters (ruined cdrs) with the adaptec/roxio software on my ABIT KA7-100 based system. I've tried botht the version 4 that comes with the drive and the newer version 5 platinum with the same results (there've been many bad reviews of ez-cd creator 5, and the store personnel told me they've had many, many returns on it). I've tried another package and it also would not write to the yamaha drive and also produced windows kernal32.dll errors. There is either some issue with the Yamaha drive (I suspect the software doesn't know what to do with that huge 8 meg buffer) or some incompatibility with my chipset or other software that's loaded in windows. The only software package I've found that works perfectly with my Yamaha drive is Nero Burning (www.nero.com). Their latest version 5.5 is about due to be released in April 2001. If you download the demo and purchase a registration code online ($49.95) you will get the upgrade to 5.5 free (according to nero's web page) buying nero this way will save you $20.00 on the new version (which will list at $69.99). SCSI v. IDE: SCSI (small computer systems interface) drives are by far the most reliable type of cdr drive-they are also the most expensive. This type of drive requires a SCSI interface card to be installed in your computer and usually require at least SCSI2 compatibility. SCSI can be tricky to setup if you are not experienced with it. Adaptec, SIIG, and a few other companies make scsi interface cards, Adaptec has the best reputation and the highest cost. SCSI devices are available as internal or external drives. SCSI devices must often be turned on when the computer boots unless you have a very new interface card and hardware. IDE drives are a much simpler installation. The IDE interface has been around for many years and most of the incompatibility issues have been worked out of it. Most computers will support 4 IDE devices connected at one time. I say most incompatibilities, but not all. My Yamaha drive will coexist with my older ide devices, I briefly had a TDK drive that knocked out my second hard drive whenever anything else was attached on the same IDE cable with it. In short, you may be trying a couple of different brands before you find one that will work with your other IDE interface devices. Firewire is so new that I haven't seen any articles on how dependable these devices are. Firewire is basically SCSI taken to new heights and can be plugged and unplugged from the interface card with the machine turned on. Firewire is a new technology, all new technology goes through a "teething phase" where companies find out what their hardware doesn't work with and work to fix those problems. Firewire is as expensive as scsi but is supposed to be as easy to install as USB. USB (Universal Serial Bus) drives are also available but due to the rather slow transfer speed that this bus is capable of, they are slow and not fit for a primary drive. If you've got a laptop and you want to add an external cdrw to backup files, that is about all a USB burner is fit for. USB CDRW drives are too slow to be a primary drive for ripping music files or burning more than a couple of discs. USB is probably the simplest installation of all. New computers come with at least two usb ports. In short, if you want to burn data cds just about any cheap cdrw drive will do. If you want to duplicate copyguarded audio and data cds make sure the cdrw supports RAW mode and don't forget to consider the software packages. update 9-2002: USB 2.0 devices are now on the market. These devices preserve the ease of installation of usb but provide much more bandwidth and faster transfer times than usb 1; it is supposedly comparable with firewire transfer speeds. If your machine is less than a year old you probably have a usb 2 capable usb controller on your system. If you don't have usb 2, you can disable the onboard controller and purchase an add in card. To my knowledge, the only version of windows that officially supports usb 2.0 is windows XP.  |
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