32x CD-RW Roundup Vol 3- Page 2

- TDK CDRW321040X

The drive supports 32x writing (Z-CLV), 10x re-writing, 4MB Buffer and "BURN-Proof" as the main anti-buffer underrun technology. The maximum reading speed of the drive is 40x (CAV). The exact writing speeds are 4x, 8x, 12, 16x, 20x (CLV) and 32x (20x-32x). The re-writing speeds are 4x, 8x and 10x. The drive doesn't support Mt. Rainier format. The drive includes a C2 error reporting and supports all known writing modes (DAO, SAO, TAO and RAW).

- TDK 32x writing speed

TDK CDRW321040X supports 32x writing speed with the use of the Z-CLV writing technology. Below it's the Nero CD Speed writing graph that illustrates the use of Zone-CLV writing technology:

The 32x writing speed range is divided in 3 zones: The drive starts writing at 20x from the lead-in area till 12mins, shifts up to 24x at 16mins and lastly shifts to 32x at 40mins and stays there until the end. The average recording speed is 26.85X, which makes it as fast as ASUS CRW3212, at least according to the Nero CD Speed writing test. The drive will write almost all CDs at 32x, even lower quality media.

- The package

The package supplied was the retail European version. This included: the TDK drive, an installation guide, audio cable, a CD-R pen, 1 piece of TDK Reflex Ultra 80min 32x CD-R blank, 1 piece of TDK 80min HS-RW, mounting screws and a CD-R pen.. The software supplied with the drive was Nero v5.5 / InCD v2, and TDK Digital MixMaster. TDK offers 2 Year On Site Collect and Return Service (in E.U., Norway and Switzerland). The complete package will be available at .... including 16% VAT. (s.r.p.).

The tray of the drive is blue and has the "TDK"logo. On the front panel you will also find two leds, the eject button, the headphone jack and the volume selector. As usual the tray has a fluorescent blue color adding a special hue to the drive:

At the back of the drive we will find the usual connectors (IDE interface, power), the jumpers for setting the drive as a Master/Slave, the SPDIF output connector and the analog/digital output connectors. There are 3 jumpers at the left of the back. The 2 jumpers on the left are not used (factory reserved), and the third is being used for making the drive working at UDMA33 mode. If you remove the third jumper, the drive works at PIO-Mode4 mode - which is suggested in case your CDs are un-readable:

- Installation

The TDK 321040 was installed as a Master in the secondary IDE Bus. The drive worked in PIOMode4 and after booting, identified itself as "TDK CDRW321040X".

We used WinXP for the recording tests. In order activate DMA, under VIA chipset, you have to install VIA's IDE Busmaster drives or Intel's Application Accelerator , for Intel chipsets.

The drive was a Januray 2001 model with firmware revision v3.41 installed. We used Nero (5.5.7.2), InCD (3.21) and CloneCD (3.3.4.1) for the recording tests: