Are 40X CD-RWs worth it?
Posted on 14/05/02 15:45 by Jan Willem                             
Are 40X CD-RWs worth it?

One of the things that mostly is mentioned when we post about new high speed CD-RW drives is if they are worth the money for the few less seconds you spend on burning. Businessweek has an article about this.

They tested CenDyne's Lightning III 40x12x48 and Plextor's PlexWriter 40/12/40A and found that they cut only about 16 seconds off the average time that a 32X drive needs to burn a 650MB disc.


The diminishing return on speed is attributable in part to the new drives' use of Zone-CLV technology for writing to CD-R media, which divides a disc into three write zones. At the outset of each, the drive speed jumps up, but then it plateaus. Although the maximum is 40X, these drives won't write at 40X until they reach the disc's outer third.

In our tests, CenDyne's 40X drive (priced at $140) took 3 minutes, 23 seconds to write a 650MB CD-R on the fly, beating out its 40X Plextor rival (at $160) by just 3 seconds. The packet-writing results were not as close: CenDyne's 40X drive took 1 minute, 6 seconds to write a 100MB folder of files to CD-RW, while Plextor's required an additional 14 seconds.

The 40X CenDyne was also slightly faster in our tests of digital audio extraction and application installation.


Altough the need for speed is also an argument to buy a new drive, there are also new technologies that pop-up in new drives.

Most new drives bring us now also new technologies like Mount Rainier, Audio Improvement writing technologies and with 48x CAV writing the writing time even drops a lot more !

Source: Businessweek.com

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Reactions
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By Guest, Tuesday 14 May 2002 16:35
6 or 12 seconds? This is really nothing as long as you dont burn 1000discs a day, maybe then it makes a difference but for the standard user???? Why not stopping creating faster CDRW drives, i dont need faster ones. How about working on better quality and lower noise? better buffer underrun technologies or more compatible to different copy protections. This is more important then saving some seconds!
By Guest, Tuesday 14 May 2002 17:00
Good point tom909 but don't forget that, like said in the newspost, along with new drives offering higher write speeds, they always also include new techniques to ensure a high quality back-up. If they (the manufacturers) would for instance bring out a new drive with the same speeds as a previous model but with more/better features would you buy it? I think the most important feature of a drive people first look for are still its supported speeds. I have the TEAC CD-W540E writer here (40x) and I really love it. Not only is it very fast but I have never had a coaster yet due to its quality-ensuring techniques.
By Metallian, Tuesday 14 May 2002 21:31
Metallian3 minutes and 23 seconds = 3.38 minutes = 17.75 discs per hour = 426 discs per 24 hours. 3 minutes and 23+16 seconds = 3.65 minutes = 16.44 discs per hour = 395 discs per 24 hours. Difference per 24 hours = 31 discs. All this with one drive and not taking into account the time needed for changing discs. I don't think it's worth it (difference between 32x and 40x).
By Metallian, Tuesday 14 May 2002 21:33
MetallianPlease correct me, if I'm wrong.
By the111, Tuesday 14 May 2002 21:46
Only in the sense that nobody copies disks that much, so the statistics are irrelevant. Interesting enough though. When I had a 4x drive I was largely happy with it. I only bought another when they flawlessly copied SD2 at 24x - quite a jump, no?
By Brayza, Wednesday 15 May 2002 06:23
Its DVD Burning they should be spending more time and dollars developing! IMHO, CD Writing is already more than good enough for most users needs. Maybe they could increase re-writing speeds a bit, but lets face it, most of us CD Freakers hardly even use the re-writing cabablitites of our existing Burners Wink, as the CD format isn't ideal for HDD backup. regards, Br@yza!
By Guest, Wednesday 15 May 2002 06:28
They should stop making faster CDRs and work on RWs. If my drive could do RWs faster than 4x (or 8x if you can find the expensive high speed RWs) I would use it a LOT more.
By Everitt, Wednesday 15 May 2002 07:43
[b]They should stop making faster CDRs and work on RWs. If my drive could do RWs faster than 4x (or 8x if you can find the expensive high speed RWs) I would use it a LOT more.[/] wtf mine does it at 12x
By eBwoy, Friday 17 May 2002 15:10
Alright geezerz ! I've got a humble pleXwriter 16-10-40 and to be honest, da little suckaz fast enough for me ! At 16x burning for a full 650 CD at about 6m30s and maybe 8m30s with a 10x RW - can't really complain ! Itz a high quality little sucka too . . (just looks shite !) Da main problem iz da 3 days it takes to download a poxy 650meg CD in da 1st place, here in sunny England ! Laterz .. . :4
By Guest, Saturday 18 May 2002 09:30
I am quiet happy with the Plex 12/10/40 and 8/20. BUT If they were to release a Plex SCSI 40 Speed writer, then maybe...Just maybe...:4
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