Allen Harkleroad

August 1, 2001

Plextor has a new high-speed CDRW drive available. It writes CDRs at 16x, writes/re-writes CDRW discs at 10x, and reads CDROMs at 40x. The great thing about this drive is that it is an IDE drive. Most high-speed CD recorders require a SCSI controller. The Plextor 16/10/40A runs on a PCs standard IDE controller (ATA33). I had a few misgivings when I got the drive and found out it used the standard IDE controller. After installing the drive (takes 5-20 minutes to install) I installed EZ CD Creator (comes on the included CDROM) and rebooted. After the machine came backup to my desktop I put a fresh CDR in the drive, proceeded to burn several large CD images (500+ MB .iso images), and was very pleased that it burned the images perfectly, it took about 5 minutes to burn a full 650MB CDR. Even after 15 images, it was still going strong! I then put a CDRW disc in the drive and copied files from my hard drive to it, the job went very smoothly. As most CDR and CDRW users know, IDE is famous for causing a CDR/CDRW recorder to create bad or defective disks. Well the Plextor 16/10/40A will not let you down; the drive contains what Plextor terms as BURN-Proof Technology. Burn-Proof (licensed by Plextor from Sanyo Electric Co., LTD.) ensures that the disk is being created properly by preventing memory buffer underruns, which is the leading cause of bad CDR and CDRW media recordings.

I very much enjoyed reviewing the Plextor 16/10/40A recorder. The recorder performs perfectly and lives up to Plextor claims regarding the product. We have bought several Plextor recorders in the past for CD replication and will continue to buy Plextor products in the future. The price is right; the products live up to our expectations and are very reliable. Plextor also provides firmware updates periodically for their entire product line to ensure that the end user gets performance they want and need in the future.

Pricing:
Plextors online purchase price: $229.00 (US), you can find it cheaper at retail outlets and online computer hardware companies.

Specifications:
Part # (retail kit): PX-W1610TA/SW (internal IDE)
BURN-Proof technology (licensed from Sanyo Electric Co., LTD.)
E-IDE (ATAPI-4) interface
3-in-1 drive: 16X CD-R, 10X CD-RW, 40X max CD-ROM
140ms Average Random Access
2 MB Buffer
Records highest quality audio CDs
Capable of Digital Audio Extraction at 40X max
Supports CD-DA; CD-ROM (Mode 1); CD-ROM (Mixed Mode); CD-ROM XA (Mode 2, Form 1 and Form 2 and Mixed Form; CD-I; Photo CD; Video CD; CD-Extra; CD+G; CD Text
Compatible with a large number of CD-R and CD-RW media
Burn-Proof technology eliminates buffer underrun errors in fast write modes, allows for multi-tasking
Flash ROM allows for easy upgrade over the Internet
Windows 95/98/2000/ME and NT4.0 Compatible
Supports Disc-at-Once, Track-at-Once, Session-at-Once, Variable & Fixed packet writing modes
One-Year Full Warranty and Unlimited Toll-Free Tech Support

Minimum Hardware Requirements
CPU: Pentium MMX 200MHz
RAM: 64MB
ATAPI interface: DMA should be set to ON in operating system. IDE controller must be set to PIO Mode 4 or DMA Mode 2.
How to enable DMA inside operating system. Refer to your motherboard manual on how to set PIO Mode or DMA Mode.
HDD: 1GB free space for writing in CD to Image mode
(Results may vary depending on system configuration

Comments:
We highly recommend the Plextor 16/10/40A recorder. The recorder performs well and is very affordable. You do not have to worry about buying and expensive SCSI controller and have to take time to install and configure the controller. Pop out your old IDE CD drive and pop the Plextor 16/10/40A in and off you go!

For more information please visit Plextor's website here

 Copyright 2001, Allen Harkleroad, All Rights Reserved