Customer Reviews

Iomega 32359 40x12x48 External FireWire CD-RW Drive

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

 

 

... I saw that Iomega had done essentially the same thing and felt that given the good experience I have had from my trusty USB 1.1 workhorse I would plunk down for one of these.

INSTALLATION

Installation on my PC was a snap - Windows XP recognized it immediately without the need for any special drivers and I was away. It comes with MusicMatch jukebox and some burning software but I already have Musicmatch and I am a Ahead Nero (ASIN: B00005BGB2) user so did not install it. Nero recognized the unit right away and I was able to use it's buffer-underrun protection (not available with my previous burner) and offered me the chance of burning at 40x (6Mb/sec)!

BURNING A CD AT SIX MEGABYTES PER SECOND

I dropped the single 40x 700Mb CD-R that the drive came with in to the unit, and put a full 700Mb file on to the disk in just over 3 minutes! It was quite noisy once it was wound up to full speed - lots of furious whirring and whooshing - but nothing alarming; it simply is darn fast. I enabled the "verify data" option in Ahead Nero and this was an even speedier operation, as the drive reads at 48x. Six minutes later I had a perfect, verified CD-R; my previous burner took over half an hour to achieve this! Progress indeed.

CHEAP MEDIA

I was able to use some very inexpensive 32x media without problems too (burned at 32x too, of course) - my previous burners have often been fussy about the really bargain-basement CD-R's I've put in them sometimes, insisting on dropping down to 1x on occasion. Not so with this drive.

PHYSICALLY

Physically it is "full-size" for a burner. It is not very heavy and the plastic casing feels well constructed. I like the fact that it comes with a second firewire port in the back so I can daisy-chain items. It came with a single, rather short, firewire cable. There is also a port in the back for a headphone-style socket and it came with a cable to connect this to your sound card. This is in addition to the usual headphone socket on the front of the unit complete with volume control.

All an in I am very pleased - it's very fast, completely portable, fully compatible with my (pretty standard) PC set-up and easy to use. Recommended.

We were very disappointed with this product! This CD burner isn't compatable with OS 9.2, which came out over a year ago. We actually had to downgrade our computer to try to use it! Afterwards, the burner still didn't work, and now our computer is buggy. This burner is also incompatable with iTunes. This product may work on a PC, but we wouldn't recommend it for a Mac. We're sending this burner back for a refund.

Not good at all if you use a Mac. It didn't work with OS X 10.2. When I emailed Iomega tech support they said they don't support anything later than OS 9.1, and wern't too aplogetic about it. Too bad that OS went out of date almost 2 years ago. This might be a good drive, especially if it was still 1999, but it's 2002 and Iomega needs get with the game.

Contrary to what another reviewer has said, this works fine with Mac OSX. The sotware that comes with the burner is for OS9 only, but, everything needed to use this drive is built in to OSX already. If you're running OS9, then just install the provided software, If you're running OSX, then just plug it in and go. To write data, just drag stuff to it in the finder, and then use the 'burn' menu item when you're ready. Use iTunes to make music CD's (standard, or MP3). To erase a CD-RW, use the Disk Utility application in the Applications/Utilities folder.

I give it 4 stars. Deducting 1 star for the noise level (only when burning), and the fact that the documentation doesn't tell you, and no one at Iomega knew, that you need to use Disk Utility to erase. If you're reading this, then that problem is solved.

Contrary to what another reviewer has said, this works fine with Mac OSX. The sotware that comes with the burner is for OS9 only, but, everything needed to use this drive is built in to OSX already. If you're running OS9, then just install the provided software, If you're running OSX, then just plug it in and go. To write data, just drag stuff to it in the finder, and then use the 'burn' menu item when you're ready. Use iTunes to make music CD's (standard, or MP3. To erase a CD-RW, use the Disk Utility application in the Applications/Utilities folder.

I give it 4 stars. Deducting 1 star for the noise level (only when burning), and the fact that the documentation doesn't tell you, and no one at Iomega knew, that you need to use Disk Utility to erase. If you're reading this, then that problem is solved.

When looking for a new CD-R(W) drive, I wanted FireWire compatibility, fast speeds, and something which would be reliable. From the Iomega name and experience with other Iomega products, I knew the reliability factor would not be an issue. As for the others, I was very pleasantly surprised when I came upon this model.

I specifically use MacOS 9.2, and have not had any trouble with this drive. I am a bit baffled, actually, by the other reviews posted here noting problems using this operating system and this CD-RW drive, as both have worked flawlessly for me in the two months I have used this drive (almost daily).

One of the big selling points (which was not actually a requirement for me) is that this can handle mini-CDs. Trying to inset a mini-CD into slot-loading CD/DVD drives (such as the default CD-RW drive on the iMac) will destroy the drive.

The fast speeds are great. I am able to burn data CDs, audio CDs, and VideoCDs is about 1/6 - 1/8 of the time required for the default CD-RW drive in the iMac. (Copying CDs, however, naturally defaults to the speed of the slowest drive.) The only drawback is that drive access is incredibly noisy, but this can be used to determine from the next room how the burning process is progressing.

I strongly recommend this drive in conjunction with Toast 5 Titanium for Macintosh users. Without being forced to reinstall Toast, the program instantly recognized the new Iomega CD-RW drive. Also, while Toast would have problems using inexpensive blank CD media with the default internal iMac CD-RW drive, Toast has yet to have problems with inexpensive media on the Iomega CD-RW drive.