Customer Reviews

Plextor PlexWriter 121032A 12x10x32 Internal EIDE CDRW Drive

5 star:		(37)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

The Ultimate CD-burner on the market. Plextor makes flawless burners! this is one of the fastest available so far. I have burned over 50 cd's and not one ruined! Burnproof technology does work and this drive has it. Burn an 80 min 12x CDR in just under 6 1/2 minutes! Easy to install, less than 5 minutes. All major cd software packages out there support it. There is nothing bad about this drive!

Outstanding performance from this cd-burner. A great new feature is "Burn-Proof" -- which virtually eliminates ruining CD's because of buffer underruns when writing at high speeds. This means you can continue using your PC for other tasks while the writer is creating your CD. It also takes the risk out of copying from a slow CD-reader that ordinarily couldn't keep up with this speedy new drive. This is especially great for novices who tend to waste lots of blank CD's while trying to find the best combination of settings for burning new CD's.

I now use my drive mostly for creating data cd's - - storing my digital camera photos that take up so much room on my hard drive. And for peace of mind, I make a duplicate copy just in case one of the CD's gets damaged somehow. And with blank cd's costing around 35 cents (and getting cheaper), this is a cheap reliable backup... especially when you consider the alternatives.

This drive plays music cd's well, and can extract songs from them easily. I have a 6-disk cd-changer in my car. Now I don't have to carry around so many cd's or switch them so often because I can create my own custom CD's that contain only the tracks I want to hear. This Plextor makes it so QUICK AND EASY to do. And I hear no quality difference whatsoever between the custom-created CD's and the original. I safely store my originals at home and don't risk driving them around the country anymore.

The speed for writing to re-writable disks is 10x. That is the fastest I have seen. I use re-writables to backup frequently-used files that change (microsoft money data files, address book, software projects, email, etc.).

I use my drive with Adaptec EZCD 4, and my operating system is Windows 2000. I certainly get lots of use from this reliable top-performing drive. And packet-writing is supported.

I received my Plextor Plexwriter in early December 2000. To be honest, I hate EIDE burners. I have used SCSI before and the performance was better. So why would I buy an EIDE CD-RW drive? One person that I have spoken with and is extremely knowledgeable about burners has a Plextor (not this model though). He didn't have one bad thing to say about it. I heard of Plextor about 6 years ago, and decided to look into this. I read about 5 reviews of the Plexwriter, and all were good.

The single detail that sold me was BURN-Proof. What this does is when the 2 MB buffer runs out during the burn cycle, the drive stops burning, and remembers where it left off. Once the host drive picks up again, the drive starts where it left off, and continues burning. I only know of 2 drives that include BURN-Proof. The high end ZipCD, and the Plexwriter, although this drive has better reviews.

The last CD I burned had over 500 MB of movies on it. While I was burning at 4X (though I could have done 8X just as well), I was downloading full board on my cable modem, I was copying about 2 GB of movies across drives, looking over web sites, and had ICQ going.

Let me repeat that: burning a CD at 4X (a generic CD at that), downloading at over 100K/sec, copying 2 GB of files across drives, using the web, and talking in ICQ. So how did the CD come out? Flawless. I wasn't even trying to go easy on it.

My system is a Pentium II 450 with 256 MB of RAM. Nothing spectacular. So how slow was it during the burning? I didn't even notice the burn going on.

The downside? The drive is expensive..... BUT I have peace of mind knowing that I can go hardcore on burning and do whatever I want with my system and burn flawless CDs. So far I have only burned a few, but they were all perfect. And these aren't expensive CDs either.

A friend of mine bought a cheap... burner and won't use anything but ICQ while burning. I FULLY use my machine while burning CDs. The Plexwriter doesn't even care.

Simply put, THE BEST drive I have ever used, and the drive is very quiet too. Much quieter than my old Memorex 40X CD-ROM.

You decide. I'm sold on Plexwriter 12/10/32A. Keep in mind that the 8/4/32A does NOT have BURN-Proof.

I have owned Plextor products for over seven years. I recommend them to family, friends, professionals, and collegues. Simply put, purchasing from Plextor is purchasing that is worry free. I never worry if the drive won't work, or more importantly that the product will not live up to my expectations. This latest product is no exception. I dual boot under Windows NT and Windows 2000. The unit works flawlessly under both. Installation was easy, and posed no problems. For those of you looking to buy an upgrade, or purchase a CD-RW unit for the first time, you will not go wrong with this unit.

For those of you starting out, outside of a solid CD-RW, writing software is the most important. I use CeQuadrat WinOnCD version 3.7, and have used Adaptec Easy CD Creator. Both are solid products. Interesting note, Adaptec is the USA distributor for WinOnCD. If you plan to burn CD's, don't cut corners in cost. Spend the money up front, purchase a good burner AND good software. The amount of headaches you will save yourself will be worth every penny.

I upgraded from the 8x/4x/32x to this one. The 8x doesn't have the BURNproof, and I made a few coasters with that one. With the 10x I have yet to manage making just a single coaster (LOL). I can now easily mutitask, and still burn a perfect CD! As to the previous review: I absolutely do NOT understand how you can run into ANY problems installing this drive. I had mine installed in less than 20 minutes, and didn't have any problems. You probably changed some settings inadvertently. To all prospective buyers: This is the only burner you will need for a longtime!!

I bought this drive after reading horrendous reviews of the Yamaha 16/10/40 drive, which has software and hardware incompatibility issues, as well as (what appears to be) "falsified" speed ratings by Yamaha (the drive is slower than they say it is; check reviews on here or CNET and you'll see what I mean). Anyway, I've always heard of how great Plextor is; #1 etc etc. Well, I know now that they are. I bought this drive as an upgrade from an HP8100i which I've had for over 2 years and never had any problems with. This Plextor drive is simply incredible. Note that almost all CDR Soft supports BurnProof, including Nero, DiskJuggler, CloneCD, and even the GARBAGE EasyCD. The only CDR Soft I have that doesn't support it is MP3CDMaker. (I have all the above mentioned installed, minus EasyCD) I also have BlindWrite Suite installed but I don't know if it supports BurnProof or not. Anyway, I burned an audio MP3 CD with Nero 5.0.2.4, meanwhile I was online, active on ICQ, moving files around on my hard drive, and just generally "rooting around" to PURPOSELY mess this thing up. It didn't even break a sweat, and it didn't slow down either! Burned an 8x certified CD of about 680 megs of data (like 76 minutes of audio in total) in a little over 7 minutes. Again I say: this drive is absolutely incredible. They just announced a 16x drive, but considering that from 12x -> 16x you might save 2 minutes *at best*, is it really worth waiting for that drive? I don't think so. (I have a P3 866 with 448 megs of RAM) This drive is an absolute STEAL at $229 considering you'd pay around $250 or more at stores for a 12x HP drive, which WON'T have BurnProof (or JustLink) or any type of buffer underrun protection.

I've been watching the spec's for quality CD burners get better and the prices get lower. Was ready to buy an HP 9110i for backing up data and for making audio CD's, UNTIL I heard about the "buffer underrun" problems.

Then I heard about Plextor's 12/10/32A PlexWriter with the "BurnProof" feature. I ordered one and have not looked back.

I was worried that my old Pentium MMX/233 system might choke with this burner. Not to worry! Since getting my Plexy on December 15th, I've burned through TWO spindles of 50 12x CD-R's making audio CD's and data backups without any problems. And while I was creating my CD's, I was web surfing, using Norton Disk Doctor and reading from my 24x CD-ROM all at the same time. Fantastic!

I started making CD's with the EasyCD Creator software that came with the burner, but have sinced switched to using Nero for making audio CD's and CloneCD for backups. The cost of using these two pieces of software is about $110. The cost to upgrade to EasyCD Creator Plus is about $80. In my limited experience, the combination of Nero/CloneCd for making quality CD's without any trouble is worth the extra $30 (since I saved more than that on the Plexy).

Four stars only because of the EasyCd Creator Standard software. It becomes the limiting factor when trying to burn audio Cd's for audio CD players. Otherwise, a great first time purchase. This 12/10/32A Plexy can burn ANY cheap media, but you will be better off using better quality CD-R media if you want to archive stuff for longer than a month. The cheaper media "fades" after awhile, creating read errors when accessing the CD-R

After finding that PC Magazine and Consumer Search recommeded the Plextor 32x12x10A CD-WR and afterwards making sure that no rock was left untruned in validation of their recommendation I decided to make the purchase from Amazon. Having had it for about 2 weeks and having burned through more 20 data and music CDs without a single glitch (using generic COMPUSA 100 pack CDs = 20 cent CDs), I am very happy with the Plextor 32x12x10A CD-WR. Installation was a snap. I was up and running within 20 minutes. Given this is my first CD-WR, I don't have a baseline to compare it's speed, however I am pleased with it's performance.

On the downside, and the reason I rate it 4 stars, I wish it had come with the full version of Adaptech's Easy CD Creater 4 "Deluxe" software rather than a lighter version. Upgrading will cost you approx. $70.

Good luck with your CD-WR purchase.

If you want the best drive on the market then you will buy aPlextor. Plextor service is great if you do have a problem. My first plextor burner malfuntioned and they overnighted a new one the next day.

Great Burner. Used for 2 months and it is flawless. Easy to use after a person become famliar with how to use Adaptec software. It also include Plextor Manager 2000 software Which works super. You must understand that if formated CD-R that can be used only for direct saves. If you are going to copy a CD do not format first. Follow the software to copy CD to CD. It is best when you copy to the Hard Drive and the back to the blank cd, unless you have a later version of CD Reader or DVD cd Reader. Even 5-X DVD will not rip correctily to the CD Recorder. TO get full use of Burn Proof you need to purchase Adaptec Created Pro program. Althought the software that comes with the Unit is good. It is not necessary, only gives you more options. Great Product. Easy to download update Firm ware from Plextor Web Site and easy to install. Best on the Market.