Customer Reviews

Creative Labs MK4214 CD-RW Blaster 8432

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I bought Creative's CD-RW drive mainly because it's cheaper than HP and other top manufacturers, plus you have that Creative brand name. With all the I've heard of unreliable CD-RW drives and unsuccessful burning attempts that result in your CDRs becoming coasters, I was sure that I would face the same problems. However, in the past 3 months, I've successfully burned 18 CDRs and had only one unsuccessful burn. My computer is a Pentium 3 with 500 plus Megahertz, 128MB and yada yada... basically it's a FAST multimedia PC (running on Win 98) and that fact perhaps may have helped in the performance of this CD-RW drive. Tip: Upgrade your slow computer to a fast one because the success of a burn depends on the writing speed of your CD-RW drive which in turn depends on the speed of your PC.

Installing is a breeze; once you pop the drive into your CPU, just turn it on and the system automatically recognises the new drive, you don't need any drivers. After that, install the Nero Burning ROM software that comes with the package. Nero is simple to use and straightforward that it took only ten minutes for me to figure out the burning process. The interface comprises of windows that shows all your directories/folders/files and all you need to do is to click and drag the files (that you want to burn) into the CD-RW drive window, then press the burn button in the toolbar. Of course you must insert the CD-R/RW in the drive first; a cool thing I found was that I could just push the loading tray in by hand to close the drive, no need to push the "in" button. The CD-RW software, Prassi abCD is also good; easy to install and use. One rule I stick by: don't run other programs while burning

There are certain things you can do to help maintain the life of your CD-RW drive. First, don't overwork the drive by burning CDRs continuously one after another. I never burn more than 3 CDRs in one day. Secondly, although this CD-RW drive works as a CD-ROM as well, it would be better to have separate drives; CD-ROM purely for reading and CD-RW drive purely for burning/writing. Once I put into my CD-RW drive, a music CD which has specks of dust on the reading surface and I immediately regretted it. Luckily the dust did not get into the drive and interfere with the burning.

Some of the negative reviews posted here may be unwarranted because often it's NOT the product but THE WAY people use that product that determines its success. With Creative's excellent 8432 CD-RW drive, I've had one successful burn after another, so I heartily recommend it especially for those with a fast computer.

What can I say, it's fast AND reliable. I've never had a failed burn out of 50 or so. Comes with awesome software by a company named AHEAD, called "Nero Burning ROM." It works great. Want to make an audio cd out of mp3s? Just drag then from your hard drive over to the cd and that's it! Copy a CD? Just hit copy and you'll have an identical copy. It works great, not a single problem installing.

Buy this over a Hewlett Packard. HP has horrible customer service. There is not a single toll free tech support line. This burner is awesome, I highly recommend it.

This product seemed like a godsend at first. It was 20 dollars cheaper then the HP burner and although I heard great things about the HP burner I got the Creative one. What a pile. The nero program was either a pile or the burner itself. And the customer support? Damn I was on hold for 20 minutes. I eventually hung up. Don't get me wrong, it burned software fine. But it also made 7 coasters when it came to making audio cd's. I tried mp3 to audio cd, cd to cd, and wave to audio cd. One of them came out fine. The rest all got a cdb error. It would get to the first or second track and then come back with a buffer error or a cdb error. I went to Neros troubleshooting page and read up on it. This error is a bad one. It could be caused by a million things. And as a consumer I don't have the time to do hours of troubleshooting on a product.

This may be a simple fix but after being put on hold forever and after it ruined 9 cdr's I gave up. I packed it in it's box and sent it on it's way. Everyone says HP is the best and I'm going to try and see.

This burner is great for the money but has 2 problem's if you are running a computer below a pentium 3 do not buy this burner if you do buy it (with a slow computer) the software will not run good. If you are running a fast computer like mine (a pentium 3 128 RAM) you will like this burner. 1 more problem if you are going to copy CD's this burner does not work well with DVD ROM's because I have a DVD ROM on my computer and sometimes it crack's a lot (the burned CD) but that problem can be fixed just go to "My Computer" and device manager and change the drive name then the cracking will go away. If you are a mp3 fan like me you will love this burner it can burn 15 to 20 songs to one CD-R. This is truey a great burner.

It works just fine with the Nero software which comes with it (Nero is good software), however the following software does not work with this CD-RW (EZ CD Creator, Music Match, MP3CD and I'm sure there are more.) So right now I rate it 4 stars since the Nero software can do everything I need to do, but it has been reduced to 2 star due to extremely poor, almost non-existing support for Creative Labs. My last Creative Labs Product.

I received the 4214 due to a 20.00 off coupon and began making coasters immediately. I never in my wildest dreams thought I could create coasters in the privacy of my home & can now die happy. To make the dream even more sweet I purchased Adaptec Easy Cd 4.1 & was making fewer coasters (darn) but still made some after 5 calls to Creatives answer to long distance carriers dreams (20+ minute hold minimum) they agreed to replace the obviously defective unit but they insisted on sending a refurbished unit further they forced me to speak to several people in order to convince them to accept a credit card # so as to reduce my wait time (they wanted me to return the defective unit) wait for them to diagnose it's malady & then after verifying that it was faulty replace it. I am convinced it is only because I have 2000.00 of their stuff that they sent me the drive without my first sending the old one back first. Now here's the kicker the new drive they sent is a 8433E not the 8432

which I had & it is not supported by the 100.00 Adaptec software I purchased due to the Nero burning rom software which came with the burner being less than good. This took numerous long distance calls to Adaptec to detirmine. so all in all I would be forced to say DO NOT BUY THIS BURNER even though now after dounloading the update for Nero to version 5.22 it does work fine. It was far too much work & when you factor the cost of the now useless Adaptec software I paid 300.00

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!DO NOT BUY THIS BURNER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, to be perfectly honest, I had my doubts about purchasing a cd-burner; but then I realized how great they were when I saw my friend burn a cd on his. What really amazed me was how the quality of a recorded audio cd is the same as the master! I bought this burner because it was the most conservative buy. You get the name (Creative), the speed, and decent software/support all for a price thats right in the middle. I also strongly believe that one can't really go wrong with Creative Labs products. Besides, they have the coolest packaging of any brand :-) Seriously though, its whats familiar ... something you can trust (the blue and orange box). I have had no problems so far with the burner itself (it's awesome). The only gripe I have is that the software could be better. It's sort of like trying to learn the basics of DOS all over again. Don't get me wrong, I am fluent with computers, but in todays world I really shouldn't have to READ the directions. Usually I can just use them for reference; not with this stuff. Once you learn it though, it works.

Although it's not the fastest writer on the block, it's a solid value at ($) or less. The RW software that comes bundled does not work with Windows 2000, so you'll have to find something else to do RW work. The Nero CD-R software is easy to use, especially for the novice. All in all, a good bargain.

Although I have yet to truly put my CD-RW through its paces, I can say that the burns I have made have worked very well in cheap CD-ROM drives. To me, this is definitely a plus. Also, the burning software is fairly intuitive - another plus.

*Disclaimer: I'm a geek. Things that are intuitive to me are far from intuitive for my parents.

I will say, however, that since I hadn't really done my homework ahead of time, I wasn't quite sure what settings to choose in the burning software. I would have liked to have seen better explanations of the different options in the manuals, and maybe even a section with tips for when to use which settings.

Also, the "packet-writing mode" for CD-RW seemed quite slow to me, but since I'm one of the few people I know with a CD-RW, perhaps this is normal. Just estimating, I would say that it is faster than a floppy, but a shade slower than a zip drive.

I've heard that CD burners can wear out with time, and I'm curious to see how long this one lasts. So far, so good. *knock on wood*

I got this burner in the Christmas of 2000, it was a great price, offered a fast burn speed and it was a name brand product. However don't be fooled by this piece of junk burner, it just plain out [stinks]! The burner itself can't even burn to 80min CD's even if the CD-R box says they are compatable, this left me high and dry since virtually every store in town carried only 80min CD's. After visiting the Creative Labs Website for a possible firmware update, I found that the firmware update was only to Windows 98 and wouldnt even work with my CREATIVE LABS 8432 saying I had some 8438E burner (the box said it was a 8432), it appears there are serval slightly different versions of this burner. Trying to contact Creative I was lead around on how it should be on a seperate IDE cable and try different media they eventually told me that I was simply out of luck.
Overall This burner is not worth the hassle, go with someone who actually supports there products.

Creative stick to sound cards..