This is probably the best CD-RW Burner Money can buy!
Written: Feb 01 '02 (Updated Feb 01 '02)
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Pros: Best CDRW Burner money can buy.
Cons: Very expensive.
The Bottom Line: Plextor has been my top choice in CD Burners for years now.
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| grimjack2's Full Review: Plextor PlexWriter 12/10/32S CD-RW Burner |
Note: The majority of this review also pertains to the Internal Ultraplex SCSI Models as well!
I had a friend who had a burner back in 1995. This was practically an unbelievable device that was the source of envy among all of my computer friends. Back then, burners were SCSI only, burned at 1x, or 40 minutes a disc, failed often, and the blank CDs cost about $9 each. I still remember when he told me he had burned his 100th coaster! That was an expensive hobby for him, but he used to copy Playstation CDs for friends, music CDs for his car, and backup all of his games and apps onto CD for easy trading and archiving. Many people were willing to pay money for copies of their various CDs since even at $10-$12 a pop, it was cheaper than buying a new CD. I also seem to remember him making a mobile out of his burned CDs for his baby, so they weren’t a total loss.
I have been following the CD burner industry since then, and finally got my own in 1997, when the price had dropped to an amazing $500, and the blank CDs were commonly seen for only $6. Plextor was the best brand for CD-ROMs for many years, and as soon as they started making burners, they instantly went to the top of the quality lists by hardware users.
Recently, a customer asked for a high quality CD-RW burner to be put into his work machine so that his company could back up their software. I wasn’t sure which brand was currently the best for him, but when I saw that his old backups were being done on a Jazz drive, so I knew he had a SCSI card in his machine. I advised he get a SCSI Plextor drive, since I knew they were still the best.
The 12/10/32S has won many awards. Plextor always seems to get and win the most awards. Just look at their web page’s trophy room if you don’t believe me. That is actually where I purchased it from. Very few chain outlets like CompUSA or Office Depot carry SCSI drives since there is the added cost of a SCSI card which has become less common in even the business world since IDE has gotten so close in performance.
The order was processed immediately, and it came in two days. It was very well packaged inside of much larger box full of peanuts. I wish more companies who sell products with much more fragile devices cared about their packaging more.
The cost was $289 from Plextor's own web site. This is a lot considering that the same product, but the IDE version was only $189! $100 more is a big difference, but if you already have a SCSI card, and even a SCSI CD reader, than it is probably worth it.
As for its statistics, it burns at 12x for a regular burnable CD-R, at 10x for a rewritable CD-RW, and reads at 32x speed. Not consistently, but it will reach 32x speed only when near the innermost tracks. At the outermost tracks the speed can drop as low as 14x. It has a 150ms average random access rating.
The burner supports Disc-at-Once, Track-at-Once, Session-at-Once, Multi-session, as well as variable and fixed packet writing modes. It also comes with a one year warranty.
The manual and box says this drive eliminates buffer underrun errors in fast write modes. It boasts being able to be used in a multitasking environment, but I'm still suspicious. When I'm burning, I don't let my machine do anything else. I can wait 6-12 minutes for the burn to continue.
The Operations Manual is 82 pages thick, and is only one of four books included with the drive. This has detailed installation instructions for all of its CD drives. It also has a large troubleshooting section and index.
In the box was also a fold out 'poster' that is titled "SCSI Drive Installation", but it really isn't. It is really installation for the optional SCSI Controller card. The part about installing the CD drive is brief, and the poster even says that it is for people who already are familiar with installing hardware on their windows based systems.
I wish the drive itself came with a similar poster of easy instructions. The Operations Manual is fine, but may be a little daunting to some novices. Regardless, anyone can insert a CD-ROM drive and attach the SCSI cable since it only goes in one way. The CD itself only has a sticker telling you what the seven jumpers represent. One is for termination, another parity, etc., and three are for the device ID. The problem is that it isn't clear which pin represents the binary 1, 2 & 4. Many people, myself included, would think that ID #1 was selected since the far right could represent ID#1. It actually came set at Device#4 according to the Operations Manual. Two extra jumpers came with it so you could easily set it to ID#7 if needed.
Installation was a little more difficult than it should have been to me, but that may be the fault of the business machine I installed it in. The Adaptec SCSI controller card that was set to ID 7, and an external Jazz was set to ID #4, and nothing else. I assumed that it came set to device#1, but the system wouldn't boot up. So I put a jumper on the middle pin expecting this to make it device#3 or device#6. This didn't work either! I still don’t know why! I took off the first jumper, which made it device #2, and this then worked. I don't know what the problem was, but according to my SCSI device recognizer, only 7 and 4 were being used before, so by having both the 2nd and 3rd tab selected, depending on the direction, either I was using device 6 or device 3, both of which should have worked!
Once installed, there are some enhanced drive properties accessed from the “My Computer” explorer window. These include setting things like the spin down time, the read speed, and the ability to lock the eject button for security reasons.
As an option, Audio FS makes audio tracks on a CD drive appear as a .WAV file from within your File Explorer. This works very well, but only on Plextor drives. This includes Plextor CD-ROMs too, but not other manufacturer's burners.
Lots of software extras come with this burner. One really nice feature to me is that all the various pieces of software come on one install CD! It even has a version number (1.8) written on the CD. When you insert it, the autostart menu has a great menu with five items. Above them is a graphical chart recommending which order to install them in. A message at the bottom lets you know what each program does when you hold the mouse over it. All this is Very Nice!
Here is some of the included software:
Adaptec Easy CD Creator 4. This is pretty much the standard when it comes to CD burning software. It has a nice interface that works well for either the inexperienced or the very experienced. Roxio is kind of the spin off replacement in just the last six months or so.
Adaptec Direct CD. This is packet writing software that allows you to write to a blank CD as if it were a floppy. Most people who use this won't even know it is working. Think of it as a way to temporarily drag & drop files to the CD burner as if it were a hard drive in order to burn later.
CD Res-Q software. This program can save an image of a hard drive directly to a CD. You can then boot from this CD to restore your hard drive! This is a very good way to do a quick backup of your hard drive sometime. It is also the easiest to use hard drive disaster recovery software I’ve seen.
Plextor Liquid Player. This lets you download and burn CDs directly from the web site of LiquidAudio. I was never a really big fan of this competitor for Realtime Player, so I still haven’t tried it yet.
Plextor Manager 2000 Software actually consists of a few various programs:
Jukebox software lets you create play lists from multiple sources and file types. This is a professional multimedia player and recorder. It is easy to burn a group of songs from one of its playlists as well. It plays numerous audio and video file formats. It can playback and record CD-DA, MP3, WMA and .WAV files.
MVP, or Music Video Producer, lets you record and play videos with the drive. It is designed to make it easy to catalog and enjoy music videos.
Audio Capture 2000 lets you extract music from an audio track into a .WAV file. This is also simple, painless, and very fast.
DiscDupe2000 is a straightforward CD copier. There are no frills, as opposed to Adaptec CD Creator 4’s software. It is very good for when you just want a quick burn.
This drive even comes with some hardware. There is an internal SCSI cable with no extra connections to attach other devices. It also didn't come with a music cable to go to a Soundcard. This surprised me, considering all the other goodies it comes with.
There is also one blank CD-RW media, and one blank CDR disc. Although not very expensive on their part, it is very nice, since a lot of people may only want just one blank CD-RW to transport files, and this allows them to do this easily.
The real reason this is the Rolls Royce of CD burners is because of the little details it includes with its drives. With the kit came a little bag with some extra terminators, extra screws to mount the drive, and get this... A small L-shaped device that is designed specifically to pop out your CD when the power is off. This is as much frill as the BMW tool kits in the trunk, or the umbrella included with a Bentley, but this sort of thing is clearly what separates the Plextor from the cheap CD kits.
I cannot recommend it enough!
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 279
Operating System: Windows
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grimjack2
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Location: San Rafael, CA, Marin County
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Film is my favorite art form. I live a life of constant amelioration.
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