12X CD-R Done Write

Plextor might not have been first out the gate with a 12X/4X/32X CD-Rewritable drive, but the reliable performance of its PlexWriter 12/4/32 SCSI makes the drive well worth waiting for. We burned nary a bad disc with the new drive--something we can't say about the only other 12X model we've reviewed so far, Smart and Friendly's CD Rocket Mach 12. If you need a CD-RW drive that can deliver the fastest CD-Recordable writing speed currently possible, look no further: The PlexWriter 12/4/32 SCSI will deliver.

But high performance comes at a high price--the drive costs $350, not counting the additional $50 or so for a SCSI adapter, assuming you don't already have one installed in your system.

The Power of Speed

The PlexWriter 12/4/32 is indeed fast: It wrote a 430MB test image to CD-R in a searing 5 minutes, 1 second, and it took only 5 minutes, 45 seconds to write the same amount of data on the fly.

However, the drive wasn't quite as adept at writing to CD-RW media. Packet writing 100MB to disc took 3 minutes, 38 seconds--a showing that's slightly behind the curve for similar-class drives. Overwriting the same data took a slothful 8 minutes, 5 seconds. Both tests were performed with the bundled Adaptec DirectCD 2.5 packet-writing software, a likely suspect for the glitchy overwrite performance. When we ran the same tests using Prassi's abCD, we experienced different results: an insignificantly slower 3 minutes, 43 seconds for the first write, and a much faster 3 minutes, 51 seconds for the overwrite.

As a media reader, the PlexWriter 12/4/32 is fast with large files, but only average with smaller ones. The drive garnered an impressive 21.4X rating on Testa Labs' CD Tach 98 benchmark software, tying the standing top rating we've seen with comparable CD-RW drives. And the PlexWriter read 430MB from CD-R in a mere 3 minutes, 52 seconds. On the other hand, installing Microsoft Office 2000 took 6 minutes, 47 seconds, a result that's a full 1 minute, 41 seconds slower than the showing by our current record-holder, Ricoh's MediaMaster 7080A, an 8X/4X/32X drive. (For more detail on how the MediaMaster compares with the PlexWriter, see our upcoming March Top 5 CD-RW Drives. )