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The
Plextor PlexWriter 8/4/32 CD-RW Drive
Turning
and Burning
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Recordable Drives have matured greatly in the
past few years and have become an extremely
cost effective and viable back-up, storage and
duplication solution for professional and home
use. Plextor
has been known for highly reliable leading
edge products ranging from standard CD drives
to CD-R and CD-RW drives.
With a standard
CD-R drive you can only write to a CD once and
if there is an error during the process, you
have made yourself and expensive drink
"coaster". CD-RW is a fairly
new type of Recordable Drive technology that
allows one to Write and Re-Write information
on the same CD which has to be a CD-RW format
CD. It allows for limitless Re-Writing
of the same CD.
The Plextor
PlexWriter 8/4/32 records CDs at 8X speed, can
re-write a CD at 4X speed and read a CD at 32X
speed. These are top end speeds
currently for CD-RW drives.
We evaluated an
internal unit. Here are more details on
the product... |
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| PlexWriter
8/4/32 Specifications |
| Do
it yourself duplication |
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Disc:
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Usable
Formats Read & Write
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CD-DA;
CD-ROM (Mode 1); CD-ROM (Mixed Mode);
CD-ROM XA; Mode 2 Form 1 and Form 2;
Mode 2 CD-I; Photo CD; Video CD;
CD-Extra; CD+G; CD Text
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Writing
Modes
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Track-at-Once,
Disc-at-Once, Session-at-Once,
Multisession, Fixed and Variable Packet
Writing
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Performance:
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Data
Transfer Rate
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CLV
Write/CAV Read
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Sustained
Read/Write
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32X (read
only)
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4.8MB/sec
– Outer Track
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14X (read
only)
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2.1MB/sec
- Inner Track
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8X
(read/write)
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1.2MB/sec
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4X
(read/write/rewrite)
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600KB/sec
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2X
(read/write/rewrite)
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300KB/sec
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1X
(read/write/rewrite)
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150KB/sec
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Burst
Read/Write
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10MB/sec
(synchronous)
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5MB/sec
(asynchronous)
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Average
Random Access
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170ms
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Front
Panel:
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Eject
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Auto
Eject; Manual Emergency Eject
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Lights
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Power
On/Disc Access
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Disc
Loading
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Auto
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Headphone
Jack
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Stereo
Minijack, 0.8V at 32 Ohms
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Volume
Control
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Wheel
Knob
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Rear
Panel:
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Power
Supply
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DC +5V:
500mA
DC +12V: 600mA
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Interface
Connector
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IDE host
adapter and 40-pin Flat E-IDE cable
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Audio
Output
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Stereo
Analog Output, Molex Connector
(L*G*G*R), MPC3 Standard
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Jumper
Switches
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Master;
Slave; Cable Select
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| As
you can see, the PlexWrtier 8/4/32 does it all
and fairly snappy too, although the random
access time could be a little quicker, this is
typical for 32X readers. |
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| Installation
/ Setup |
| Cool
breeze... |
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| Set
up of the PlexWriter 8/4/32 was a
breeze. It went as easy as installing
any other drive in a system. One note of
caution however, is that Plextor recommends
installing the drive as a "Master"
and preferably on its own EIDE channel.
This is standard procedure for most EIDE
recordable CD drives, for best reading and
writing performance. |
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| Plextor
also bundles lots of good software in with the
drive including a full suite of Adaptec's
"CD Copier Deluxe", "Easy CD
Creator" and "Direct CD".
Direct CD allows you to set up a recordable CD
very much like a floppy, allowing for
incremental writing.
Plextor also
includes a host of their own very competent
software with the drive as well.
Disk
Dupe 2000 is the first "vendor supplied"
CD Duplicator that actually worked for us as
advertised. Usually, these types of quick
copy programs aren't worth the CD they are
released on, often times ruining blank disk after
disk. Not so with Disk Dupe 2K. We had
no problem whatsoever duplicating CDs with this
tool and it did the job extremely easily with
minimal user intervention. Nicely done
Plextor.
This
is Plextor's default multi-media player that is
installed with the other tools. It isn't
much to look at but gets the job done. It
plays MPEG, AVI, CD Audio, MP3 and various other
formats. You can toggle between the Audio
and A/V Players.
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Audio
Capture and performance...
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