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I have become a gold-card carrying member of the toy of the month club. A couple of months ago, AirPort knocked my socks off, then last month Mac OS X arrived, and now this month: a new
CD-RW drive. The onslaught of new New Things seems overwhelming. After several years of new-toy drought, I am once again hip deep in Mac-related treasures.
Before the CD-RW story goes any further, a little background is probably warranted. Recordable compact discs come in two basic flavors, CD-R and
CD-RW. The former is write-once media: the disc can be written to, but not erased. RW is
re-writable: RW discs can be written and erased up to 1000 times. Both CD-R and
CD-RW discs look about the same, but they use different chemical solutions to record their data. The other big difference is price. RW discs cost at least twice as much as write-once disks. A
CD-RW drive can use both CD-R and CD-RW discs, while a CD-R drive can only use (you guessed it) CD-R discs.
Recordable CD drive performance is measured in multiples of the original audio CD standard, 1x. There are three speeds used to describe an RW drive: the write speed, the re-write speed, and the read speed. State of the art for Mac
CD-RW drives at present is 12x10x32. And faster drives come along every few months. Drives with SCSI or USB interfaces, or with slower write speeds, can be found at bargain prices right now. CD-R drives, while still available, are becoming less common in favor of
CD-RW.
The journey to find the perfect CD-RW drive for my desk began with a few basic requirements: a FireWire port, compatibility with Retrospect, and speed. I wanted the fastest, most reliable drive I could afford, which narrowed the field considerably. Especially since FireWire drives for the Mac are still relatively rare. To narrow the field even more, I read the usual Web sites and talked to my usual advisors. The result: I got a LaCie 10x4x32
CD-RW.
Because CD-RW is so new, it is sometimes difficult to get reliable information on the specific functions of a particular drive. So selecting a vendor with a good return policy is also important. It was vital in my quest, because despite extensive research, I foolishly selected a drive that was not supported by Retrospect. Worse still for my already frayed nerves, the drive's fan made more noise than my Syquest drives did 10 years ago. Burning a CD-ROM sounded like the noise generated when the Air Force launches a Titan rocket from nearby Vandenberg AFB.
I made my second choice, a Que! Fire 12x10x32, with a healthy dose of trepidation. Both the MacFixIt and Macintouch Web sites contained a lot of letters from users about
Que! CD-RW drives, and suffice it to say these drives did not cover their users in glory: it seemed as if everyone was having trouble with them.
However, as I said earlier, CD-RW technology is changing constantly. Since most of the negative comments were posted, the main Mac software for making discs, Adaptec's Toast, was updated. Moreover, the mechanism inside the drive I selected was also new, a Plextor 12x10x32. Plextor has an excellent reputation for quality, so I decided to give the
Que! a try.
Thus far I have not regretted the decision. To the contrary, I am ecstatic about this drive. In the first few days, I cooked discs faster than those speed demon chefs on Ready Set Cook whip up four course meals. Three full backup sets burned perfectly. The
Que! works great with Retrospect, even though Dantz has yet to certify this particular drive - another symptom of the newness of the technology. All my MP3 files and images were next, and again, they duplicated perfectly. In three days I mastered about 50 discs, and only three of those turned sour, almost certainly because I was still learning my way around Toast.
My quiet little Que! drive can burn backup data at about 75 megabytes a minute, which is five times faster than my old DAT drive performed a backup. And restoring a file from the backup, unlike tape, is almost instantaneous. It takes longer to put the correct disc in the drive than it does to retrieve a particular file. When I feel more like playing, I can write my own audio CD for the car in six minutes. Or I can burn about eight hours of MP3 music onto a single disc. All on media that costs less than a buck a disc.
I have to go get another toy now: a CD labeler and a box of labels. While I am at it, I probably should get a copy of Adobe Illustrator so I can create amazing labels for my homemade CDs. This toy of the month thing could be getting a little out of control.
Nah.
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"All
My Burning Desires: CD-RW"
