Plextor Plexwriter 12/10/32A

CD writer technology is far from perfect. Although it offers 650Mb of storage space for less than two quid a disc, using one can be both complicated and frustrating.

One of the most common problems with making your own CDs has been the destruction of discs during recording. There are several reasons why this occurs, but one of the most common is burn, and the best way to beat it is to get a burn-proof CD writer.

'Burn' is taken from the term buffer under-run, and burn-proof drives do not have the same problems as normal CD writers. Rather than just sending information until it runs out, burn-proof drives plan ahead to ensure the end result is a flawless recording. Eliminating buffer under-run problems practically guarantees the quality of your CD recordings. Two manufacturers currently have burn-proof drives on the market - Mirai and Plextor.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating however, and just saying that a drive is burn-proof doesn't mean that it actually is. We put both drives through our stringent labs tests to find out if they really were under-run free. The software supplied with each drive was used, and we copied a number of rather large data and music files in a variety of formats to both CD-R and CD-RW media. At no point did we encounter buffer under-run problems.

The Plextor Plexwriter uses the same burn-proof technology as the Mirai drive and achieves similar results. What the Plexwriter has in its favour is simple installation. It can be used as a straight replacement for a CDRom drive, or plugged into the same cable and used as a second CD drive because it uses an IDE interface. Setting up the Win On CD recording software and utilities is an equally simple task.

Traditionally, speed has given SCSI an advantage over normal IDE connections. But the Plexwriter is one of the first 10-speed rewriters on the market whereas the SCSI-controlled Mirai can only manage four-speed. To write at such high speeds though, the Plexwriter uses special CD-RW discs.

In our performance tests, the Plextor was faster than the Mirai on CD-RWs and roughly the same on normal CD-Rs, making the hassle of going SCSI to install the Mirai seem pointless. That said, using a SCSI interface puts less strain on the PC, which means it can work effectively with processors as slow as 166Mhz.

This review was adapted from an original head-to-head review featuring the Plextor Plexwriter 12 x 10 x 32A and the Mirai 12 x 4 x 32 - see link on this page.