detail information

In this part of the review we'll take a look at the Plextor PX-W4824A's CD-ReWriting abilities and its Mount Rainier (CD-MRW) support. For both tests we used Ahead's InCD version 3.37.0. For the erase tests we used Elaborate Bytes' CloneCD version 4.0.1.10.

Packet Writing:

We formatted the Plextor 650MB ultra-speed CD-RW disc which was certified for 24X re-writing. We fired up InCD, inserted the empty CD-ReWriteable disc in the recorder and measured the time it took from inserting the disc till it was ejected again. The InCD option to 'Format disc to CD-MRW' (Mt. Rainier) was been disabled. We will do the CD-MRW tests later on this page of our review.

When formatting was complete we measured the time it took for the drive to write our test folder of data (containing 400MB (419.742.820 bytes)). In the table below we've summed it all up for you:

The Plextor PX-W4824A performs very similar to the Yamaha CRW-F1 recorder but it's a little slower when formatting the disc. The ultra-speed CD-RW disc was erased at 24X as you can also see from the screenshot below:

Plextor PX-W4824A erasing CD-RW disc

After erasing the CD-RW disc with CloneCD we wrote the same test data again but now with Nero Burning Rom. In the screenshot below you can see that the Plextor PX-W4824A needs 2 minutes and 46 seconds to write the test data. This is about two minutes faster than a 12X CD-ReWriter:

Mount Rainier Tests:

The PX-W4824A drive is Plextor's first drive supporting the Mt. Rainier (CD-MRW) format. Let's see how well it performs when using InCD version 3.37.0. If you want to read more on the CD-MRW format please read our Mount Rainier article.

As you can see in the table above the Plextor PX-W4824A performs very well and was the fastest drive we've seen when copying the data to the (un)formatted disc. Reading was also no problem and very fast. Overall an excellent result for the Plextor drive.

Conclusion:

The Plextor PX-W4824A performs very well with CD-ReWriteable media. Although the Yamaha CRW-F1 drive was slightly faster when it comes to packet writing, the Plextor was superior to it when it came to the Mount Rainier format. When we compare the achieved results to 10X and 12X re-writers you can see that the difference is striking. Personally we love the new ultra-speed CD-ReWriteable speeds and it's great this new Plextor PX-W4824A drive supports it.

On the next page we've summed up our tests results with various media...