BUSlink 48x CD-RW IDE / EIDE Drive
Written: Feb 25 '03 (Updated Mar 28 '03)
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Pros: Low price, fast recording and audio extraction, BURN, easy to install
Cons: Discs don't play in my home stereo
The Bottom Line: Overall, I am pleased with the drive so far. The only gripe is the fact that my stereo refused to play CD-Rs recorded on this drive.
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| dkozin's Full Review: BUSlink (RW-4848) CD-RW Burner |
I needed a new CD-RW drive for my second computer to replace the USB Sony that would hang the system when powered on. So I got this drive at BestBuy for $19 after mail-in rebates. In reality it turned out to be $39. The drive is an internal EIDE model and comes with Nero Burning ROM 5.5 software (I have Easy CD Creator 5 Platinum anyway, but use Nero to make XVCD).
Front Panel
The drive has no separate “play” button on its front panel – only “Eject”, volume control and a headphone jack. I couldn’t care less, since I am not planning on using it as a CD player anyway.
Installation
I am happy to report that the installation is quite easy. The drive comes with four mounting screws and can be installed in 5-10 minutes. The drive was recognized by my PC’s BIOS and by Windows and the DMA checkbox in the device manager (Windows 98) was checked by default. By the way, the drive is being identified by my BIOS and Windows as Lite-On brand.
Drive supports Windows 95, 98, XP, 2000, NT and ME.
Since I already have a CD-ROM drive I didn’t use the supplied audio cable (for connection to the sound card) and the IDE cable. The CD-RW drive is now the secondary master and my CD-ROM is the secondary slave. In other words, I put both on the secondary channel, leaving the primary channel for my hard drive.
I normally use Adaptec/Roxio Easy CD Creator 5 Platinum for Audio CD and data CD burning and Nero Burning ROM for XVCD. The EZ CD Creator needed to be updated to the 5.3 version to be able to recognize this drive (prior to that it refused to find a CD-Recorder and thought this was a regular CD-ROM drive).
But after the update (available from the Roxio web site), the drive was recognized and the “Buffer Underrun Prevention” as well as “Write CD-Text” (latter in the DAO – “disc at once” mode) options appeared. The Nero Burning ROM, supplied with this drive, offered me to uninstall my older Nero version and then installed itself. It works fine as well.
Features
One of the coolest features of this drive is buffer underrun prevention (BURN), which a cool feature that helps you avoid making nice-looking coasters. When the buffer (this model has 2 Mb) gets low, it stops the recording until more data is available. Older CD-Recorders would just ruin the CD. However, I have another (small) issue.
Audio
The CD-R discs recorded on this drive can be played in my Panasonic DVD player, my stock Mitsubishi car stereo as well as Panasonic portable CD player. But my Sharp stereo refused to play them, which is strange – previously some discs could not be played in my car and portable players, but played fine on Sharp. I tried both DAO and TAO (disc-at-once and track-at-once). Not a problem – I normally play Audio CDs in my car anyway.
The CD-RW discs recorded on this CD-R drive play flawlessly on my Panasonic DVD player (I burn XVCD, Audio CD and MP3 CD).
Audio CD Ripping: In my test with an Audio CD, the drive extracted audio at 15x. Since my CD-ROM drive can only extract at 7x-9x (and recently bought DVD-ROM only at 3x), I now use this BUSLink for CD ripping. But even using my CD-ROM drive for digital audio extraction, I made a copy of a 50-minute audio CD in little less than 7 minutes. Much better than my old CD-RW drive that could only burn at 4x (when the weather is good, otherwise only 2x).
Burning Speed
The drive supports automatic speed selection – the drive automatically selects the burning speed suitable for media inserted. On CD-R discs certified for 32x recording, it burned at 28-33x (you can see the speed change in Easy CD Creator). The drive comes with one blank high-speed 48x CD-R, which I immediately used at full 48x.
The drive can write at 48x, read at 48x and rewrite at 12x. My CD-RW discs are only 4x certified and the packet writing is somewhat slow, comparing to DAO or TAO, but it is still acceptable.
The drive uses 48x CLV writing (constant linear velocity). 12x rewriting and 48x Max CAV Reading (constant angular velocity – the actual read speed is 16x-48x). Average access time is 80 ms, which is OK.
Bottom Line
Overall, I am pleased with the drive so far. The only gripe is the fact that my stereo refused to play CD-Rs recorded on this drive.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): $39 (rebate)
Operating System: Windows
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Epinions.com ID:
dkozin
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Location: California
Reviews written: 845
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About Me:
I love to push buttons on electronic (audio and video) equipment. It makes me happy.
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