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Plextor 24/10/40A CD-ReWriter
February 20, 2002 by Zoltan Orc
The contents of the box
This drive comes with a surprising amount of stuff. Not only
does the package include screws and spare jumpers (as all Plextor
drives since '97 or so), there is even an IDE cable in the box.
A CD-R and a CD-RW medium is also supplied. There are 2 software
CDs in the box as well, one the Plextor utilities, the other
from ahead software containing Nero (CD burning) and inCD (allows
you to use your CD-RW drive like any other storage drive). There
is also a manual in a score of exotic (and more usual) languages,
plus an RMA instructions sheet and a registration card.
Warranty
Some months ago, warranty has been increased from 1 to 2 years
on Plextor CD writers (CD drives had it as long as I can remember,
i.e. '97). And if you live in the European Union (or in Switzerland/Norway),
you even profit from a deluxe warranty handling: instead of bringing
your defective drive back to the reseller and in some cases waiting
for weeks for a replacement, now you just call/mail to Plextor,
give your serial number, get the phone number of a local courier,
give them the drive, and get a new one by courier within a week.
The good
Compatibility
Though system requirements call for a 300 MHz CPU, I could
install and run the drive finely on a 133 MHz Pentium MMX machine.
Speed
When reading CDs with this drive, you might not even realize
you use a CD-RW (which are theoretically more sluggish), it works
about as fast as a regular CD drive (which you couldn't say about
CD-RW drives 2 years ago). Indeed, this is the first CD drive
since my old 12x/16x Mitsumi that can start in the Warcraft II
briefings music, sound and animation at the same time. It might
sound a funny thing to measure a CD drive by, but it's a fact
that most high-speed drives can't achieve this simple thing.
And while Warcraft II is definitely old, this is most probably
just the tip of the iceberg, i.e. what I experience in this old
DOS game might surface as basic disc-reading problems in today's
applications and games.
Error correction
From what I've seen this far, error correction seems to be
good, which isn't surprising for Plextor drives (I wouldn't swap
my UltraPlex 40x SCSI against any other CD drive), but is not
that common with run-of-the-mill IDE drives, especially at this
price point.
The bad
CD-RW
I've used earlier on Adaptec PacketCD as Windows Explorer
plugin for CD-RWs, but after some time I stopped using it as
it was rather annoying. Now, after having installed and used
ahead InCD for a couple of days I have to say PacketCD was a
lot less annoying; I deinstalled InCD in the meantime. Back in
'99 I had my first CD-RW which was an 8x/2x Plextor SCSI drive
and I though all those annoying probs with CD-RW resulted from
the low writing speeds. Now I had to make the discovery that
it's the same at 10x rewriting speed, there are inexplainable
delays of 10-20-30 seconds when I don't know what's happening,
it looks the copy from the HDD to the CD-RW didn't start at all,
and then when I want to start it again, it comes out it's been
doing something. Also, ejecting a CD-RW a minute or 2 after I
thought the copy process is over can cause some unexpected writings
onto the CD. At one time, the system even locked up when I attempted
to copy files onto the CD-RW. All in all, I find CD-RW still
has some childhood woes no standard after this many years should
have any more.
IDE woes
I'm using most of the time SCSI devices, thus the everyday
woes of IDE users are a surprising experience for me; I was astonished
to see that several times during operation I wasn't able to move
the mouse for a couple of seconds (but it's a basic problem of
IDE, not something with this drive).
Conclusion
As long as you don't want to use your drive as a kind of harddisk
and don't install InCD, experiences are rather pleasant with
this drive. It's fast and reliable in both reading and writing,
and thanx to BurnProof you don't have to worry about discarded
CD-R media. If it weren't for the „Beatman debacle"
(see here),
I'd give this drive a 5 (I don't think all these CD-RW problems
are peculiar to Plextor drives only), but as promised in the
Beatman review, I'm extracting a whole grade from the final rating
for this kind of anti-support. While this drive supports the
Freecom Mini-CDs, now after several months there is still no
new firmware for my old 8x/2x/20x SCSI CD-RW and according to
Plextor not even the newest SCSI drives support Mini-CDs, so
I had to buy this new IDE drive. While it might not seem anything
when you get this new IDE drive, I speak about the mentality
behind this whole debacle... There is no guarantee your current
drive will support the next generation of CD standards, and no
guarantee Plextor will release a firmware for this drive when
it's so far.
| 1 = very bad |
2 = bad |
3 = average |
4 = good |
5 = very good |
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