CD-Writers: What to Look For
A Product Review by Eli Black

If you’re like most people, you probably have a shortage of hard drive space. You might also like the idea of making your own audio or data CDs. Either way, CD-RW drives solve both problems rather well, and are becoming faster, cheaper, and easier to use. The question is what to get.

In comparing drives, three factors to consider are speed, software, and brand name. A CD-RW drive's speed is represented by a 3-part number, such as 4x4x24. The first number is the speed at which the drive writes to a Rewritable disk. The second number is the speed at which it writes to a Recordable disk. And the third number is the drive’s speed as a CD-ROM, in this case 24x. In simple terms, 2x is approximately 300kb/second, and it increases proportionately (i.e. 8x is about 1200kb/second). This formula makes it easy to estimate how long it will take to put data on a disk.

Another factor to consider is the included software. It is fairly universally agreed that Adaptec Easy CD Creator is the best software available for the purpose (this was back when Nero sucked and Roxio hadn't bastardized ECD yet -Eli). It’s easy to use, includes a lot of options, and works smoothly.

A CD-RW drive’s quality can sometimes be measured by the number of unusable CDs (or "coasters" as they are sometimes called) that it turns out. Through research and personal experience, I’ve found Hewlett Packard CD-RW drives to be the best and most reliable. I have had mine (a HP CD-Writer 7500i) for several months and have made easily 75 CDs with it, probably more, and have only had one bad disk, which was due to an external problem, not the drive. A friend of mine has had a similar experience with his 8x4x32 HP CD-Writer 9100i, finding it both very reliable and very fast.

Overall, I would recommend Hewlett Packard drives, because they are reliable, and come with excellent software. Choose your model based on how much you value speed. Internal drives, although slightly more complicated to install, are faster and more convenient to use, and are usually cheaper.