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Plextor Plexwriter 12/10/32A
by Masterofmoomins
Plextor have always had a knack of making good cd burners, but they really have hit the nail on the head with the 12/10/32A. It is the fastest recorder I have ever seen, burning a whole cd in about 4.5 minutes, which compared to my old Iomega that took 19 minutes, is very impressive. It is very solidly made, unlike the flimsy ... cheap ones you can unfortunately buy by mistake, and the nero software provided, although not the best, is certtainly easy to use.
Another good thing is its ability to back up games. I have bought 4 games, and due to them always being borrowed and moved, they get scratched and dont work. If you use clone cd with the new 1.2 firmware you can back up any cd you wish, which is very useful and you wont get any failures due to the burn proof software included.
Only bad thing is the price. It varies, but the cheapest I've seen it for is £160. Not terrible, but not cheap, but its worth every penny. I thoroughly reccommend it!
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Plextor Plexwriter 12/10/32A
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What makes the Plextor PlexWriter 12/10/32A so remarkable is that it not only sets new standards for CD rewrite (10x) and write (12x) speeds, it raises the bar of CD-creation reliability to unprecedented heights. Its £180 estimated price might be high, but you'll more than make up for it with the savings of having no ruined discs. ...
CD-R drives must create audio and data CDs in a continuous write operation, where even a momentary interruption will result in a spoiled CD. Thanks to its Burn-Proof technology, however, the PlexWriter is able to recover from interruptions and resume writing exactly where it left off. This means that you can still use your computer while you burn CDs, knowing that the activity of other programs won't cause the write process to fail.
It also means that you can copy files to a CD at 12x, even if the source drive can't sustain such a high continuous data rate. I created an audio CD from MP3 files on a network drive - a source that most CD writers would find too slow at any speed. The PlexWriter finished creating a full disc, despite frequent interruptions, in less than 10 minutes.
I tested the IDE drive and it got a WinMark 99 score of 1,080, a read speed that is at the high end for CD-RW drives. It took 6 minutes and 36 seconds to copy a full CD to a CD-R disc, and only 4 minutes and 40 seconds to copy 300MB of data from the hard drive to a CD-RW.
Plextor includes a decent software bundle, including Adaptec's Easy CD Creator 4, and its own Plextor Manager 2000 for disc copying, audio-CD creation, and digital audio extraction.
Add in Plextor's reputation for quality, and the conclusion is superb. If you want a high-performance CD-RW drive with top-shelf CD-creation reliability, the PlexWriter 12/10/32A is the one to get.
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Plextor PlexWriter 12/4/32
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The Plextor 12/4/32 is considered to be the best SCSI CD writer on the market. This CD writer supports both reading & writing in MMC DAO RAW mode. What this means is a copy program “CloneCD” uses MMC DAO RAW mode for writing CDs. This means that CloneCD will copy almost any of CD Protection! It takes an SCSI-3 ... Interface which is an UltraSCSI and has a 20MB Burst Data Transfer Rate. It has a built in 4MB buffer, most others only have 1MB and only a few have 2MB. It has an access time of 160 ms and is multi-read compatible.
It can write at a fast speed of 12x, which means you can burn a 74 minute CD in about 6 to 7 minutes and about 1 minute more to burn an 80 minute CD. It will rewrite your CDRWs at 4x, this is rather slow compared to the 12x of a CDR. It can read your current CDs at a variable rate of 14x to the maximum of 32x.
It does support a SPDIF output which is your Digital Audio Output.
CD Protections
Many manufactures theses days like to put in some sort of CD protection. This is done to keep us from making copies of the CD. There are several different types of protection and they keep coming up with more.
You are legally allowed to make a backup of a CD that you legally own. This is for protection in case your original went bad, most people will use the backup copy and store the original CD.
You are not allowed to give a copy to anyone that includes family and friends.
CloneCD
This is a CD copying program that will copy 1 to 1 and make an exact copy of your CD.
Your CD writer has to be able to support certain commands for it to work. Not all CR writers will work with CloneCD. If your CD writer will work with CloneCD, it will make an exact copy of almost every CD even if it is copy protected.
CloneCD is shareware, so download it and give it a try. Be sure to check out the listings of what CD writers will work with CloneCD. The PlexWriter RW 12/4/32
works great with CloneCD.
As long as it is shareware you will have some restrictions like, it will only write in a 2x speed. Registered users can write at any speed of their CD writer, plus technical support and free updates.
This is a must program if you are going to make copies of your CDs that are copy protected.
CD Text
The Plextor 12/4/32 can read and write CD Text information.
CD Text Information is usually things like the CD title, the name of the songs, the artists and much more can be written on to your burned CD.
This information is nice if your audio CD player displays who is the artist and the name of the song.
What you get
The Plextor 12/4/32 SCSI CD writer (Internal & external version available)
Plextor Utility software
Recording Software WinOnCD, Packet CD and BackMeUp
One CD-R disk and one CD-R/W disk
A 12 language manual
Over-Burn a CD-R
The Plextor 12/4/32 can Over-Burn a 74 minute and 80 minute CDR.
What this means is on a 74 minute CD there is really about 77 minutes of reordering time but most CD writers will only recognize the 74 minutes. Now the 77 minutes is at peak, some maybe 76 minutes or 75 minutes, the main thing is this writer can burn every minute available on the blank CDR.
The same goes with the 80-minute CDR it can go to a little over 83miutes.
There are 99 minute CDs coming out, I’m not sure how they will work on this writer or any other writer.
Overall
This is one of the best writers I have used, you will need a SCSI card to use this one. (Not IDE)
CloneCD is nice and worth having to make exact duplicates of your CD, I still prefer Nero for all the rest of my CD writing.
They do have a newer model out with almost the same features writing at 16x.
It comes with a “One Year Full Warranty” on parts and labor
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