One of the few high speed CD burners worth the money
Written: Jan 05 '01 (Updated Jan 23 '01)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Fast CDRW writing, reads subchannel data and audio and can rip CDs at 32x
Cons: Could be a few bucks cheaper but hey, ...you get what you pay for.
The Bottom Line: This drive is worth every penny of the purchase price. It basically will do anything you ask of a CD writer, and fast too.
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| Gr8ful's Full Review: TDK veloCD ReWriter 12/10/32 |
The TDK VeloCD 12x10x32 CDRW drive is one of the few high speed CD writers that is truly worth the money you spend on it. I have had much experience with this drive in the last two months installing, troubleshooting and using this drive at work. The only reason I did not purchase it was because the Hewlett Packard 9510i was on sale and performs just as well for my purposes as this drive. The only differences between them are that the TDK burns CDRW at 10x while the HP drive burns CDRW at 8x speed. Also, the VeloCD uses Burnproof technology which basically is a 99.9% guarantee of eliminating buffer underrun errors.
What's so special about this drive?
It looks cool
The first thing you notice when you take it out of the box is that this drive really looks cool. I know that has nothing to with it's performance but people like things that look good, and this drive does look good. It has a frost,bluish white tray door that is semi-transparent. When installed in a decent tower case it really looks nice.
Installation
All CD devices are installed in the same manner, so installation is a real breeze. I have written other opinions on installing CD devices so I will refrain from repeating myself here. Installation is simple, enough said.
Burnproof technology
Without getting to technical, burnproof simply lets the writer pick up where it left off. When the memory buffer runs out of data, instead of ejecting a useless CD it waits until the buffer is full again and starts burning exactly where it left off. Really, the only way you'll burn a coaster (bad CD) with this drive is if your computer gets shut off during a burn.
High speed digital audio extraction
If you have read my review on buying CDRW drives, you know that most CD-R/CDRW drives can only extract music from audio CDs at a maximum of 8x. This drive blows all that away with an astounding 32x rip speed. You can rip a full 74 minute CD into MP3 files in as little as 3½ minutes. This is great if you have an MP3 player and want to rip some new music for it but you have to leave in 10 minutes. Rip the disk in 3½, download it to the player in 6-7 minutes and you're out the door with new tunes.
What about data disks?
The TDK VeloCD 12x10x32 and the 8x4x32 are both capable of reading subchannel data and audio as well as writing in RAW mode. This means that not only can you make data CDs from files off your hard drive but you can copy copyright protected installation disks for backup also. This was my main purpose for buying a new CDRW drive and if I had a little more money and really needed the 32x rip speed I would have bought this drive instead of the Hewlett Packard 9510i that I purchased.
This drive works with several writing software titles including...
* Nero Burning Rom
* Adaptec EZ CD Creator
* CloneCD
* CDRWIN and several others
For music I suggest using Adaptec EZ CD Creator or Nero Burning Rom and for data I would use only Nero. For copying CDs there is only one software title that I am aware of that does this job perfectly every time with this drive and that is CloneCD. CloneCD writes in true RAW mode and Windows does not have to be able to understand the data to be able to write it. I have used it with this drive in a PC to copy Linux CDROMs and even Macintosh CDs and both have burned correctly and worked flawlessly on their host operating systems. I have not tried Playstation or Playstation 2 CDs yet (mainly because I don't own any). For some reason I feel that from my previous statement I would get asked that question so I threw that in here.
Really the only thing this drive won't do is simulate writing with CloneCD. You can burn perfect disks but you can't "test" burn before the actual burn. This really isn't a problem because the drive has the burnproof technology so testing isn't necessary anyway.
Conclusion
The TDK VeloCD 12x10x32 is a really great drive and an excellent buy for the price. It will do anything you ask of it provided you use the correct software for the task. If you have $250 to $300 to spend (depending where you shop and when) and want a burner that really can do anything you want, this is probably the drive you are looking for. If you want to save a few dollars and don't really need the 32x rip speed, the HP 9510i is just as reliable as this drive, it just isn't quite as fast burning CDRW disks.
Good luck shopping for your burner and thanks for reading.
Gr8ful :-)
Recommended:
Yes
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