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Plextor 40/12/40 IDE
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Posted by Robin van Lieshout
Posted on 19/04/02 18:31
Number of views 7524
Menu
 Conclusion
 Introduction
 Package and Features
 Software: PlexTools
 Transferspeed
 Nero CD Speed & CDDV Benchmark
 Audio Read Performance
 Digital Audio Extraction
 Reading protected data
 Writing tests
 Protected CD's test
 Protected Audio CDs
 More write tests
 90/99 minutes writing
 Rewrite tests
Text Size  Text Size
Software: PlexTools
 

PlexTools:

A few years ago I bought my first Plextor. I loved the drive and it came with a small softwarepackage called Plextools. I installed the software but it didn't seemed to me that it had any use , or couldn't do anything more than the burnsoftware I got with the drive.

In fact it seemed to srew up my system from time to time by freezing or giving a blue screen. There wasn't much fuzz about Plextools on the internet. So who cared about this ? But Plextor Europe kept the idea and is in fact the only part of Plextor that still works on new versions.

Well , as the 8/4/32 and other drives came it kind of dissapeared into the mass of other utils that were floating around the internet The Plextor 40x came with a new version of Plextools V1.12 And I was amazingly surprised that due to very hard work the program had become even very usefull and was in fact for some topics the most usefull program in my collection.

As concerning the new Plextor 40x and Plextools it is even become one of the reasons to buy the drive., because , yes, if you don't own a plextor you cannot use Plextools.

So what does it do and what makes Plextools so important:

  • Plextools as in version V1.12 let's you tweak the settings of your drive and gives some nice info on the drive.
  • But the most important part are the audio functions.

    We are not going to go any deeper into Plextools right now because version V1.13 is coming very soon and promises a lot, we have already seen a demonstration !

    The most important thing for me that I was able to rip any protected audio CD without any problems or without using third party software.
    You can see the results on the pages on protections further in the review.





    Conclusion:

    Keep an eye on Plextools V1.13. It will offer a lot. This beautiful piece of software makes you capable of backing-up all your protected audio cd's. If you buy this Plextor you must install Plextools !

    On the next page we will take a look how it read's your CDs.
    Package and Features
    Transferspeed
    • Want to submit your own review? Click here
    Posted by 123456789 on Monday 22 April 2002 21:28
    We would like to see an option to switch poweRecII off in order to try and burn at 40x regardless the media


    This is NOT negative, it's a precaution.
    Why switch something off that is a great help for the right burning speed.

    So it's a 100% score!!
    Posted by roadworker on Monday 22 April 2002 22:29
    Nice review....:)
    Just 1 thing to add:it's obvious that the reviewer didn't use the best settings to get the quickest reading time for the LiteOn and safedisk 2...
    Why?To make the Plex look better???:d
    Posted by Fishbutt on Tuesday 23 April 2002 08:59
    Heh, and I bought one today before even reading this review. I bought the us version with TLA#0000, firmware 1.00 and made in Feb 2002. I was going to look for anything referring to the firmware flashes and disabling the sd2.5+ backups. There was a rumor(?) about a previous plex burner that supposedly disabled that "feature" and made it so you couldn't reverse flash to a previous firmware version. I want to be sure of this BEFORE I flashed it to whatever the bios is up to now for it. I will go and look for plextools 1.13 tho...

    My tests with cdda99b showed it's speed very good but it had to slow itself down a few times. CDSpeed tho, gave a constant reading. Plus I tried a brand new pressed music cd I got about a week ago (the first one was a few months old so it might of been dirty or something) and the results were great! I'll post some of the cd speed results shortly...
    Posted by louiskhorweiwu on Tuesday 23 April 2002 15:18
    any chance you did tests for reading damaged discs? scratched etc? very useful and was in other reviews, hope it gets included/ kept in mind for future reviews...
    Posted by Fishbutt on Tuesday 23 April 2002 21:21
    Before I read louiskhorweiwu's reply, I was already going to test the plex to see if it could read a scratched disc better than my previous drives. Those were a TDK VeloCD 12x10x32 which was one of the earlier models that was a repacked plex and a Pioneer dvdrom dvd-104 slot drive. Both of those drives could not read that disc without reporting errors. The plex 40x went through it fine, although not screaming through it like it normally does. Here's the clonecd log of the cd in question. The cd was "on the floor at the boutique: mixed by fatboy slim." It's a 2 session disc with audio and a video. I'm running a test on a really bad data cdr that someone gave me to try and read that looked like it was dropped on the asphalt outside. It used to be guarenteed to lock up the box anytime you put it in. Clonecd is running pretty slow but it's not locking up the pc yet. I'll post those results when they are finished.
    Posted by Fishbutt on Tuesday 23 April 2002 21:22
    I 3:01:34 PM CloneCD Version 3.3.4.1 started!
    I 3:01:34 PM ElbyCDIO Driver 3.3.3.1
    I 3:01:34 PM ElbyCDIO.dll 3.3.4.1
    I 3:01:34 PM CCDDriver.dll 3.3.4.1
    I 3:01:34 PM ElbyECC.dll 3.1.0.0
    I 3:01:34 PM Searching for SCSI/ATAPI devices...
    I 3:01:34 PM Device Scan found 1 CD-ROMs and 1 CD-Writers!
    I 3:01:34 PM Registered to:
    I 3:02:24 PM Starting copy from PLEXTOR CD-R PX-W4012A to H:My

    Musicfatboy.ccd
    I 3:02:24 PM Read SubChannel Data from Data Tracks: No
    I 3:02:24 PM Read SubChannel Data from Audio Tracks: Yes
    I 3:02:24 PM Fast Error Skip: No
    I 3:02:24 PM Don't report read errors: No
    I 3:02:24 PM Intelligent Bad Sector Scanner: No
    I 3:02:24 PM CD contains CD-Text: No
    I 3:02:24 PM Reading Track 1... (Blocks 0-12512)
    I 3:02:47 PM Reading Track 2... (Blocks 12512-28571)
    I 3:03:14 PM Reading Track 3... (Blocks 28571-37890)
    I 3:03:29 PM Reading Track 4... (Blocks 37890-52144)
    I 3:03:53 PM Reading Track 5... (Blocks 52144-63512)
    I 3:04:12 PM Reading Track 6... (Blocks 63512-83852)
    I 3:04:46 PM Reading Track 7... (Blocks 83852-99550)
    I 3:05:12 PM Reading Track 8... (Blocks 99550-120409)
    I 3:05:47 PM Reading Track 9... (Blocks 120409-141819)
    I 3:06:22 PM Reading Track 10... (Blocks 141819-155740)
    I 3:06:46 PM Reading Track 11... (Blocks 155740-169389)
    I 3:07:08 PM Reading Track 12... (Blocks 169389-187623)
    I 3:07:39 PM Reading Track 13... (Blocks 187623-198718)
    I 3:07:57 PM Reading Track 14... (Blocks 198718-209953)
    I 3:08:16 PM Reading Track 15... (Blocks 209953-229028)
    I 3:08:48 PM Reading Track 16... (Blocks 229028-244683)
    I 3:09:14 PM Reading Track 17... (Blocks 244683-264302)
    I 3:09:46 PM Reading Track 18... (Blocks 264302-274862)
    I 3:10:04 PM Reading Track 19... (Blocks 274862-302227)
    I 3:10:49 PM Duration of operation: 00:08:24
    I 3:10:49 PM Reading Track 20... (Blocks 313627-330513)
    I 3:10:58 PM Duration of operation: 00:00:08
    I 3:10:58 PM Reading finished!
    Posted by Fishbutt on Tuesday 23 April 2002 21:29
    The way that music cd was scratched was from this...

    Look at the inside of a cd jewel case. The tiny "fingers" that are in a circle arrangement that grab onto the hub of the cdrom, that's what scratched it. Apparently, the cd slipped out of the jewel case slightly and it was still 98% shut. The cd hub holder scraped across the surface of the cd pretty good. Good enough to make any audio cd player that it was put into skip alot. As you can see, it went through it without reporting errors! Whoopee! I just saved an old cd that I thought that I'd have to buy another because this one was accidentally damaged!
    Posted by lanky on Wednesday 24 April 2002 04:48
    The review looses 1 point for a rather obvious error:

    On page:
    http://www.cdfreaks.com/document.php3?Doc=74&Page=12

    I quote:
    "The result shows that the PX-W4012TA initially begins the writing at 16x whereas it changes speeds after 6 minutes to 24x and after 16min to 32x an finally after 58min to 40x. The overall average writing speed is 29.88x."

    The part:
    "initially begins the writing at 16x" is wrong. If you look at the picture it starts at 20x!! Please rectify.
    Posted by PieterViljoen on Thursday 25 April 2002 19:38
    Note: Please be aware that PlexTools 1.12 (as shipped and downloadable)is NOT compatible with Windows XP! This notice appears on the autorun dialog of the software CD.
    Posted by on Thursday 02 May 2002 02:27
    Great review , but get the names and serial keys out of the screenshots.
    Posted by qbfabar on Thursday 27 June 2002 20:54
    Very good review.
    Why not include in the audio protected test programs such as Feurio and EAC which have proven even better than Plextools in copying protected audio cds ?
    Posted by on Monday 08 July 2002 11:50
    NO MOUNT RAINIER??? No mention being made of Mount Rainier support, or lack of it in the review article? Looked at the specs as well on the plextor site, and again no mention of it. Surely this should be a negative point.
    Posted by on Thursday 22 August 2002 19:59
    I bought one yesterday before reading this review...it definetely blows my old burner away(it burned a whole 700Mb in under 5Min) but Im having trouble burning anything past 80Min or 700Mb still,both with 700Mb media, and 800Mb media...
    Posted by on Tuesday 07 January 2003 17:49
    http://www.plextor.com/english/news/Mt.%20Rainier.html This is Plextors page on this subject and here it is in a nutshell.
    Plextor PX-4012TA and PX4012TU drives are Mt. Rainier 'ready". Once Mt. Rainier is stable, a firmware upgrade will be offered at a later date to make the drives Mt. Rainier compatible. Future Plextor drives will be Mt. Rainier-compatible on release.

    This review was very helpful I give it a 99% :g
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