CD-RW's - Removable Storage Devices

Out of all the removable media options available on the market, CDs are the most efficient and cost effective. CDs are small, and can be easily stored. Most CDs hold 650-700 megabytes of data, which equals 74-80 minutes of CD Audio. CD-Rom drives are located in most computers today. Most homes and cars have CD players, making it the best choice to also store your music files.

If you compare CDs with the other options out there, CD writers are still the best. Although DVDRs are on the horizon, they are too expensive and it will take at least a year or two for prices to become reasonable for home users. CDRW’s can replace zip drives because they are smaller and hold more data. CDs also have good shell lives, spanning from 50 to 200 years.

EIDE or SCSI?

A long time ago, SCSI was king. Being faster and more dependable than their EIDE counterparts, SCSI was the premiere choice for CD burners. Although EIDE has been closing the gap, SCSI is still faster than even the fastest EIDE.

However, with today’s faster EIDE Ultra ATA-100 and SATA interfaces, you won’t see much of a difference in burning performance between the same rated SCSI drive. But the difference in price is much greater with EIDE drives being cheaper. Also, all motherboards come with about four EIDE ports while SCSI ports are mostly acquired by buying adapter cards. There are motherboards with SCSI ports on them but these are not very popular in home desktops.

There is no reason, unless you have spare SCSI ports lying around, to get a SCSI because EIDE is cheaper, just as fast and almost as reliable as SCSI.

Speeds of CD-RW Drives

The faster the speed, the quicker it will finish. Basically, speed is limited only by the depth of your pocket.

For those who don’t know, the middle rating on a drive is usually the CDRW speed, which is how fast the drive records data on a rewriteable CD. The first and last numbers will typically represent how fast the drive reads data off any CD, and how fast it records data onto a non-rewriteable CD.

As an example, on a 52x-24x-52x drive, the 24x speed in the CDRW speed. At this date, there are burners with CDR speeds at over 50x and CDRW speeds at over 20x, but an 8x or 12x CDRW is still fast and won't cost a lot.

Necessary Software

The CD burning software bundles included with most drives should satisfy your basic needs. But if you are looking for the best of the best, try Roxio's Easy CD Creator PRO. This has excellent audio ripping capabilities, burns fast and includes many features.

It All About The Media

You can buy the best quality drive but if you use bad media, you'll end up with many a coaster. There is no one good media out there, but there are good media for certain drives. The best media for your drive is normally what the manufacturer bundles with it. Also, preferred media information will be listed on the manufacturer's website.

And one very important point not to overlook is to buy rewriteable CDs that supports the speed of your CDRW drive. For example, if you bought a drive that writes at 24x speed, make sure you buy rewriteable CDs that support up to 24x speed.

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