We started out this comparison intending to test DVD-ROM drives that were CD-RW capable, it soon became apparent that these were a rare beast indeed.
So rare in fact that we only managed to round up two, the AOpen DRW-4624 and the Ricoh MP-9120A. So we decided to be a little less selective and also test your garden-variety CD-RWs as well. Oh, and for good measure throw in a DVD-RAM drive from LaCie as well. In total we ended up with two DVD-ROM/CD-ROM/CD-R/W drives, ten CD-ROM/CD-R/W drives, of which one was an external unit, and the single DVD-RAM.
Now obviously we are not going to directly compare the different types of drives--the LaCie for example is in a class of its own, which is why we included it as a sidebar. However, all the drives will happily read a CD-ROM so we have included all the drives in the CD-ROM benchmark charts. And speaking of CD-ROM capabilities, the vendors claimed read speeds ranged from 24x for the AOpen DRW-4624 up to 40x for the Plextor PX-W1610TA. Claimed CD-R writing speeds were from 4x to 16x and CD-RW not a great deal slower at 4x to 10x.
How we tested
The test bed for the CD/CD-RW units was a Gateway K7-1000 with 128MB of SDRAM. All the CD-RW drives under test were IDE and as such were configured as Master and connected to the secondary IDE port of the motherboard, the IDE port was set to Auto mode.
Each CD-RW was tested with the software provided with the unit. To test the day-to-day CD performance of the units we employed Ziff-Davis' CDWinBench 99 Version 1.0 and higher scores indicate better performance. Each of the CD-RW units were tested in CD-R and then CD-RW recording mode. To test the units we burnt identical copies of a 71 minute and 47 second audio CD and timed the process. Shorter times are desirable and are a measure of higher performance.
| Product | Review | |||
| Acer 1208A-032 | Read Review | |||
| AOpen CRW-1232 | Read Review | |||
| AOpen DRW-4624 | Read Review | |||
| Creative CDRW 121032 | Read Review | |||
| Iomega ZIPCD3840INT-A | Read Review | |||
| Diamond Data 12832 | Read Review | |||
 Ricoh MP7125A |
Read Review | |||
| Ricoh MP9120A |
Read Review | |||
| Shintaro CDRW120 | Read Review | |||
| Yamaha CDRW2100E |
Read Review | |||
| Hitachi DV-W1 "Dual Drive" | Read Review | |||
| LaCie DVD-RAM | Read Review | |||
| Plextor PlexWriter PX-W1610TA | Read Review | |||
| Iomega Predator | Read Review | |||
| Fellowes Neato 2000 CD Labeller | Read Review | |||
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| = Editors' Choice.
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2%
4%
