CDRW Buying Guide
CDR or CDRW?
CDR stands for Compact Disc Recordable - in other words a CD disc that can be written to only once. CDRW, on the other hand,
stands for Compact Disc Re-Writable - a disc that can be written to many times (2000 times per sector or more). The home user
should rarely find the need for CDRW capabilities. This is polarized by the fact that CDRW discs are very expensive, while
CDR discs cost only around £1. However, CDRW drives are not much more expensive than CDR drives, so unless you're on a very
tight budget, get a CDRW drive as these can also burn standard CDR discs.
IDE or SCSI?
For the average home user the answer here is IDE. SCSI drives need a SCSI card to function
(some a sold with a basic card, but then the cost is also somewhat higher). SCSI cards can cost well
in excess of £100. However for some purposes SCSI does exhibit better performance and reliability,
but for the most part IDE devices are cheaper and often just as fast.
Speed - what does "6/2/2" mean?
Just like CDROM drives, the speed of a CDRW or CDR drive is measured in relation to the earliest CDROM drives.
However, the situation here is more complex. A speed of 6/2/2 means the drive will read CDROMs at 6X speed,
burn standard CDRs at 2X speed and rewrite CDRW discs at 2X speed. At 2X speed you should expect to wait
around 40 minutes to burn a full 650MB onto a standard CDR disc.
For CDR drives you will just see a speed like 8/4, which means the drive reads at 8X speed and burns at
4X speed.
Sometimes you will see a drives speed advertised as 2/4/12 - here the order has been reversed, so this
drive would read CDs at 12X, burn CDRs at 4X speed and rewrite CDRWs at 2X. The easy rule of thumb is
that the highest number is always the read speed of a drive.
4x or 2x write speed - what to buy?
This depends on your budget and how many CDs you intend to burn. However, you can now buy a 4X recorder
for around £170 (it is not a CDRW drive though) and we recommend such a purchase in preference to
a device that burns both CDRWs and CDRs at 2X. The extra speed afforded by 4X is very noticeable - even
for modest requirements.
Can I burn my own music CDs?
Yes - this is no problem. However it is a big advantage to have a normal CDROM drive also installed in
the machine if you want to do this. When reading music CDs, the CDROM drive will use something called DAE
(Digital Audio Extraction). DAE is done at a somewhat slower speed than that of your CDROM drive - for
example my 36X speed Aopen drive will perform DAE at up to 7X speed. When duplicating music CD's, your
DAE speed needs to be at least double your burn speed (ie 8X for burning at 4X and 4X for burning at 2X).
So if you want to duplicate music CDs at 4X, you will need the fastest CDROM drive you can lay your hands
on! If you want to make your own compilations, you will need up to 1 gigabyte of free harddisk space to
store the music files before committing them to a CD.
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