Testing

 

TEST BED

Windows XP Professional (Latest Update Possible)

AMD Athlon XP+ 1800

Epox 8K3A1+ Motherboard

256MB Mushkin RAM PC2700

Hard Drive – 60 GB Western Digital 2MB Cache (Hard Drive attached to IDE Channel 1 Master)

TDK CD drive attached to IDE channel 2 and set to master

     The first test I conducted was a standard file copy of a disc that was approximately 675 MB in size.  The disc contains an assortment of files which include movies, mp3’s, multiple formatted pictures, game demos, zip files, and program executable files (CD was not copyrighted).  I transferred the same files over 3 times and averaged the score in seconds.  When transferring the files I had nothing running in the background and everything possible that would affect transfer of files off.  The average transfer of 675 MB of files was 151 seconds. 

     For the next test, I choose to burn a CD of an assortment of files (similar to those files on the CD I ripped to the hard drive).  As you can see by my artful MS Paint job, the burn time was 2 minutes and 41 seconds and the size of the disc was approximately 677 MB.  I kept background programs to the bare minimum to keep the computer running and there was no other activity to hamper my burning time.

     My next test was the burn speed of a CD-RW.  The box and TDK claims that it has a 16x rewrite ability.  Well I ran that same battery at the CD-RW that I did for standard CD-R.  For those of you who don’t know, a CD-RW (rewritable) allows you to burn something on the disc but unlike regular CDs you can overwrite things off the disc and rewrite whatever you want over and over again.  Some companies claim their CD-RW media can last well over 100 re-burns but I myself nor anyone I know has ever had a CD-RW for over 100 burns.  The problem is that people either lose the CD or it gets too heavily scratched for the laser to properly work on the surface.  Strangely, when I tried burning with a CD-RW disc I was limited to choosing up to 12x but not the promised 16x.  This is strange also, because the CD media in question is the TDK CD-RW packaged in the box.  Although I couldn’t get it to run on 16x I ran the test anyways running 12x.  The file size this time was slightly smaller, but a still hefty 512 MB’s.  The entire burning on a CD-RW under the 12x speed was 5 minutes and 36 seconds.

     All is not perfect in paradise with this product though.  When I purchased this CD drive I also bought a pack of Memorex CD’s rated at 40X speed.  I figured if it wouldn’t let me run at 48X I could always notch it down to 40X for all my general burning purposes.  Well, I was wrong because when I tried burning with Nero it only allowed me to select a speed of 12X and under.  Granted, when I popped in a TDK CD I was allowed to burn at the blazing 48X speed but the fact that I was hindered from burning any faster using a Memorex brand CD really made me angry.  Not only that, but even the TDK brand CD-RW disc wouldn’t burn at the promised 16X speed and I was stuck on a 12X speed.  Though other brands seemed to work on the burner at higher speeds I was unable to test every CD brand on the market and therefore can’t promise you that you can buy one of those 100 disc spindles and you may not get full burn speed out of them even if they are promised to run at a high speed.  One other thing I noticed is that when a disc would start spinning up it does get kind of noisy, but nothing that would start making your household animals go insane. 

Conclusion

     CD burners will continue to be important in backing up data and if you don’t have one yet, why wait?  Prices are incredibly good right now and if you find the right mail in rebate you can be looking at a very cheap burner.  TDK comes out swinging and really has a great line of CD burners, this one included.  They pack the burner well and have a great set of bundled programs for both beginners and the more experienced burner.  Not only that, but you get a few other programs to goof around with and installation is a breeze with video reference, diagrams, and online help as well.  Overall design is good too.  The drive itself is sturdy and stable.  Also I really like the nifty blue CD tray, though I can see how some people may be turned off by it. 

     Price wise I think that it offers you plenty of bang for the buck, and when I purchased the drive it included a 40 dollar mail in rebate so in the end it was 80 dollars.  Despite all the good and the bargain price, the problem of media limiting burning speed has me worried and although it shouldn’t be that big of a deal, I found it to be more of a hassle than it should be.  That is really all that is limiting this drive from being near perfect.

     Despite the media shortcoming I encountered, this drive is really great and I have had no run problems with it.  Coming from TDK this product has plenty of tech support for those who are having problems, and if you’re in the market for a CD burner, I can say that this drive is worth your while. 

Overall: 89%