The Plextor PlexWriter 16/10/40A CD-RW Drive
Quick cuts and speedy reads...

4/4/01 - By  Dave Altavilla

Taking a closer look at read performance, CDSpeed will break things down a little more.

Digital Audio Extraction:

Once again, the PlexWriter edges out the competition.  But what about Digital Audio Extraction or DAE, for short?

CD Layout Report CDDAE99 

We decided to use a fairly large disk with 17 audio tracks.  As you can see there is a ton of audio data on this disc.  Extracting way out at the edge of the disc we see 41X performance.  On the inner most area at track 1, we see 19X performance.  In either case, this drive will handle your DAE needs with ease.  Good solid performance was turned in by the PlexWriter 16/10/40A with respect to extracting digital audio. 
  

Head-to-Head vrs. Plextor's Legacy 8/4/32 16X write and 10X Re-Write shows its muscle

Alright then, let's get down to the performance that really matters.  How does the PlexWriter 16/10/40A perform on writes?  We hope to paint a fairly clear picture for you here.

Well now, that is a pretty picture isn't it?  Here we see the PlexWriter 16/10/40A chop off a full 2 minutes from the time it took to duplicate this data disc.  Even when executing on a re-write disc, this next generation burner beats out the 8X drive on a standard write.  Now that's impressive.  Another point of interest is that the erase time using Adaptec's "CD Erase" program, was a mere 30 seconds.  Just wipe the CD clean in 30 seconds and you are ready to burn again.  This drive doubles as an excellent back-up for the entire Hot Hardware site! 

Let's take another stab at a full disc.

Here we see the performance of the PlexWriter 16/10/40A when writing a 630MB disc from another disc and then from the hard drive.  As you can see our read drive the Pioneer unit, slows things down slightly.  We were able to shave a few more seconds off the writing time when pulling data from the ATA100 hard drive in our test system.

Wrapping things up with Plextor's new flagship, we have nothing but accolades for a product that delivers on every level.  Whether you are using this drive as a standard read CD-ROM or CD-R or even on a Re-Write, the performance of the 16/10/40A is nothing short of exceptional. Furthermore, at a price range of $220 to $240 with various online retailers, it is a virtual no brainer if you consider a 12/10/32 Plextor CD-RW goes for approximately $30 less. Splurge and get yourself one of the fastest CD-RW Drives in the business.  We feel the Plextor 16/1040A is worthy of a perfect score.  

The Heat Meter rarely reaches this high at Hot Hardware but Plextor has done it. 

This product easily has garnered our coveted "EC Award"...

You have something meaningful to say or do you just want to flap your gums?  Get some in the Hot Hardware Conference Room now!