QPS QPCDRW121032FEM External 12x10x32 Firewire CD-RW Drive

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Product Details

Product Manual [1.44mb PDF]

• Shipping Weight: 8 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B00004YN02
• Item model number: QPCDRW121032FEM
• Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes
• Date first available at Amazon.com: September 4, 1973

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

Announcing the latest in CD recording at blazing 12x speeds: the Que! Fire 12x10x32 maintains the highest quality and stability while creating a 650 MB disc in approximately 6 minutes. CD rewriting is now achieved faster than ever at 10x speeds. With a 32x maximum reading speed, the Que! Fire 12x10x32 qualifies as a full-time replacement for an existing CD-ROM or CD-R drive.

With the new BURN-Proof technology, the Que! Fire eliminates buffer underrun errors in fast write modes and allows for multitasking. These are errors that result in wasted "coasters"--CDs rendered unusable due to a failure during recording.

Complete and ready to install, the QPS Que! Fire drive includes CD mastering software, CD-R/RW media, a protective carrying bag, and all necessary accessories you need to get started immediately.

Product Description

The Que! Fire 12x10x32 maintains the highest quality and stability while creating a 650 MB disc in approximately 6 minutes. CD-ReWriting is now achieved faster than ever at 10x speeds. With 32x max read, The Que! Fire 12x10x32 qualifies as a full-time replacement for existing CD-ROM or CD-R drive. With the new technology Burn-Proof, the Que! Fire eliminates buffer underrun errors in fast write modes, and allows for multi tasking. These are errors that result in wasted "coasters" - CDs rendered unusable due to a failure during recording.With Firewire 1394 Interface and plug and play compatibility, installing a CD-RW drive has never been easier. You can reclaim valuable hard disk space, copy or share files with drag and drop simplicity within minutes of opening the box. Complete and ready to install, the QPS Que! Fire Drive includes CD Mastering Software, CD-Recordable/ReWritable Media, a protective carrying bag and all necessary accessories you need to get started immediately. The possibilities are endless and they can be yours for an extremely low cost.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

75 of 75 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good value CDRW drive with good performance, May 18, 2001

By	Daniel Warne "Journalist" (Sydney, NSW, Australia) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Tested on: Mac G4-400 (AGP model year 2000) Mac OS 9.1 Roxio Toast 5.01

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ;)

* Great case design (translucent grey & semi-opaque white, matches G4 case design) * Virtually silent operation * Nifty included carry bag * Cannot really write CDs from MP3s in Toast at 12x without buffer underruns * CAN write audio CDs at 8x from MP3s fine, or at 12x from an audio CD image. * Can write direct from my inbuilt DVD player at 4x (fails at 8x or 12x with buffer underrun unless BURN proof is on, which slows it down.)

I just got my Que 12x10x32 CDRW drive (firewire) which replaced my LaCie 8x4x32x which I returned to LaCie recently due to a problem with their firewire bridgeboard hanging my computer....

My inital impression of the drive was "WOW!" It comes in the box packed in this neat vinyl leather-look bag which is designed with little compartments to hold the powerpack (yes it is external, but small and helps to keep the case size compact) as well as the Firewire cable, drive, and even a 'token' pouch to store one CDR disc.

Installation is easy. Plug it in to power, plug in firewire, and as long as you have OS 9.1 the OS will automatically see the drive. Toast 5.01 immediately recognised it as QPS PX-W1210A Firewire. (Remember I am talking about a Mac here, not Windows).

I was particularly pleased that the drive does not have a noisy fan, or any fan at all judging by its complete silence in the room. Thank god. The LaCie drive sounded like a jumbo accellerating along the runway (and that was while idling).

The drive I got is a Plextor W121032A mechanism unlike many people who seem to have got the Teac mechanism. Fortunately the Plextor mechanism has BURN-proof built in to protect you from buffer underruns. Basically it turns the laser off to avoid writing a blank patch (and therefore turning your CD-R into a 'coaster') if the computer doesn't feed data to it fast enough.

The firmware version on the drive I got is 1.07. On the Plextor website it is up to 1.08 but their version history for 1.08 did not suggest that there were really major improvements in the 1.08 firmware version.

The good news is that it burns data at 12x no problems.

HOWEVER ... burning audio is another matter altogether. I initially tried burning at 12x with BURN-Proof off. It almost immediately failed with a buffer underrun error DESPITE the fact that the speed tests in toast indicated that Toast was decoding MP3s fast enough for 12x write speeds. (Toast said 12x needed 2Meg per second and Toast was decoding at 2.6Mb per second.)

I was successful at burning an audio CD at 12x with BURN-Proof on, but you could see burn proof springing into action every few seconds (the indicator light on the CD changes from orange to green while writing to indicate this). It ended up taking 9min 03sec to write a 65min CD, hardly 12x!

Then I tried writing the same CD at 8x with BURN-Proof OFF and it finished in about 8 mins, which is about true 8x speed.

Very disappointing that my 12x drive seems not to be able to write audio at 12x. However it does seem to be my G4-400 not being able to send the decoded MP3s to the drive quick enough because when I wrote the MP3s to an audio CD image on my hard drive (Toast decodes the Mp3s as it writes the image), that wrote fine at 12x.

Finally, I tested burning a CD copying directly from my G4-400's DVD drive. I have always found this drive exceptionally speedy at reading CDs, especially in the digital audio extraction side of things so I was hopeful that it would be able to read directly at a decent speed. Unfortunately 8x and 12x failed with buffer underrun unless BURN-Proof was on, but as I mentioned earlier even with BURN-Proof on you don't get the true speed of 8x or 12x. So basically if you want to copy CD to CD, you have to do it at 4x.

Overall I would say I am happy with the performance of the drive and would recommend it as long as you don't mind burning at 8x or 4x under certain circumstances.

By the way, if you are going to use a 12x or 16x drive you HAVE to use good media. The cheap media can't cope with being written to at that speed. I have had flawless results with imation, TDK and Kodak CDs.

Hope you have found this review useful, as I wasted about 10 CDs testing the various write modes of the CD-RW!! ;-)

All the best Dan

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Speedy and reliable, somewhat buggy software, March 4, 2001

By	George B. Sears (Cedar City, UT USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I haven't made any coasters in 15 tries, which is good. The product is fast, but there are periods when it has to do overhead and it doesn't write. Overall, I do audio CD tracks to a full CD-R in 10 minutes or so, which is OK.

The software is a little quirky. Sometimes the Dell Inspiron 8000 will not shut down if the drive is still active. It isn't too big a deal to disconnect it, but this is still a problem. This drive also doesn't like being daisy chained with Firewire hard drives, and will sometimes lock up.

If you simply plug this device in and use it (by itself) I haven't found any defects. The latest version of Easy CD is much better than the earlier ones, on balance, despite the glitches. My computer came with the Firewire interface, which is great. I only wish it were standard on all PC's.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I really like this CD-RW!, June 3, 2001

By	Charlie Bragg (Venice, CA) - See all my reviews

I started out using this unit just for the basics, compiling a favorites Audio CD from my CD collection with no problems. Things got a little tricky-er when I was writing from Pro Tools recording software. You have to watch what your doing with the Toast software. It works well if you give it what it wants, but I had to make about 5 coasters to find out what it wanted to see from Pro Tools. This unit is not for the attention-span challenged! You have to work with it a little bit to understand it's do's and don'ts, but after you sus it out a bit, it really delivers!