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It
seems unusual in this day and age to be on the lookout for a decent
CD burner. Many enthusiasts have jumped ship to DVD burners, which
along with burning DVDs, they can also burn CDs as well. Using such
an optical drive, it eliminates the need for multiple drives to
do the tasks a modern DVD burner can do now.
By
the same token, even an 8x DVD burner cannot match the burn speeds
of dedicated CD burners. The specs will vary, but the higher end
DVD drives will burn at about 24x. This pales in comparison with
dedicated CD burners, but as usual, it's up to the buyer to decide
whether the extra time (it'll be minutes) is worth freeing up a
5.25" slot for another drive.
Personally,
I prefer having multiple drives in the same machine. I have ditched
standard CDROM drives, but my current workstation does have a MSI
DVD burner and Plextor 32x CD burner. My reasoning is a DVD burner
is rather costly, and I only use it when I need to make large backups.
Unless I need to read a piece of DVD media, most of my CD reading
and burning needs fall on to the CD burner. Since this drive is
about 1/6 the price (depreciation taken into account), the wear
and tear I put this drive through doesn't bother me.
The
Plextor has always been pretty dependable for me, but 32x is getting
to be a little pokey for my tastes. Today, we'll be looking at the
AOpen CRW5232, which ups the anteto 52x read, 32x rewrite, and 52x
writes.
The AOpen CRW5232
The AOpen CRW5232 is packaged in a fairly standard box that lists
the drive's features and specifications very clearly. Inside, the
drive is neatly wrapped in a cellophane bag and anchored by cardboard
supports. Other than the drive, you'll find a couple of faceplates
(more on that later) with instructions, a small leaflet about enabling
52x speeds, an audio cable, four screws for mounting the drive and
a Nero CD.
On the front of the drive, we have some lettering indicating the
drive's speed and that it's a rewritable CD burner. There is a small
manual eject hole for opening the tray door, which is useful when
you forget a CD and don't want to power on your computer just to
take it out. No need to straighten out a paper clip either, as AOpen
includes the wire to do this. For audio CD purposes, from left to
right we have a headphone jack, volume dial, activity LED (for audio
and data CDs) a play/skip button and a stop/eject button.
Moving to the rear, everything we've come to expect from an ATAPI
drive is present. We have the 40-pin IDE connection, molex power
connection, a jumper for Master/Slave/Cable Select operation and
an audio cable connection.
The drive is not as long as some other drives we've worked with,
namely Plextors, and should have no problems fitting in the majority
of SFF PCs.
You can grab the full specifications
from this page for the nitty gritty, but there are a few technologies
worth going over in detail.
JustLink - This is AOpen's new buffer under run error prevention
technology. Buffer under run error prevention is present on most
modern drives, and although there are different names and techniques,
they all do the same thing and that is to prevent the creation of
"coasters" when the PC can't feed the CD burner information
quickly enough. On drives without this buffer under run protection,
if you're burning a CD, and you decide to do something disk or CPU
intensive (or an automated task) the buffer will empty and the laser
will burn invalid data, thus rendering the disk useless.
With JustLink, when the amount of data in the buffer memory falls
below a certain threshold, writing is suspended to allow the buffer
to fill up again. What makes AOpen's JustLink unique is exactly
what the name implies... the gap (the link) between the point when
writing was paused and the point where writing resumes is extremely
small. According to their documentation, competitor's have a gap
of about 40 µm while AOpen is at 2 µm. If we get a 40
µm at 12x, this may seem insignificant, but double the speed
and the gap widens, thus we can see JustLink's usefulness.
Just Speed - This technology helps to regulate the drive's burning
speed based on the media that is inserted. This only kicks in at
16x and up, and the idea behind it is there should be fewer disc
errors if the media cannot handle the selected burn speed. By default,
Just Speed is enabled, but it can be disabled.
Speed Boost - We mentioned earlier about the leaflet outlining
how to enable 52x. By default, the drive actually spins at 40x.
AOpen's belief is that for something like playing an audio CD, extreme
speeds aren't necessary, which is true. Spinning at slower speeds
will create less noise, and put less wear on the drive motor. If
your media is old or slightly damaged, spinning at a slower speed
will less likely cause more damage than high speed. The drive door
isn't reinforced, so this feature is something that I find useful.
Safety be damned, to enable 52x operation, simply hold the Eject
button for about five seconds. The activity LED will blink twice
which indicates Speed Boost is enabled. Upon the next reboot, the
drive will revert to 40x operation.
Finally, definitely more of a feature rather than a technology,
is the CRW5232's ability to change faceplates. By default, the drive
is vanilla beige, but there are two additional faceplates (silver
and black) that you can use instead.
The provided instructions are pretty clear, but in summary:
Step 1: With the drive off, eject the tray using the included eject
pin.
Step 2: Remove the tray and the drive's faceplate. These have retention
tabs that you can squeeze and slide off.
Step 3: Reverse the de-installation instructions with the new faceplate.
Rounding things off is the software. Not much to say
about it as Nero makes another appearance. Unfortunately, this is
the Express version, which isn't as fully featured as the full version.
The version included is 5.5.10, which is a few revisions behind
the current version. Considering the drive was released after version
6 took to the market, it's a shame AOpen could not bundle it.
NEXT
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