Top 5 CD-RW Drives

No sooner does one CD-Rewritable technology become available than another comes along. This month we put two drives through their paces. One of them--the Yamaha LightSpeed CRW2200EZ--raises the bar for recording performance, and debuts at number two on our chart. The second--Sony's Double Density CD-RW CRX200E--nearly doubles CD storage capacity to 1.3GB per disc.

When it comes to speed, the progress these days is in CD-R write speeds (CD-RW write speeds have held stable since last summer's introduction of 10X). The $235 Yamaha LightSpeed CRW2200EZ is the first drive to enter the next-generation speed zone for CD-R writing. It has vendor-rated write speeds of 20X for CD-R and 10X for CD-RW, along with a 40X speed for reading CD-ROMs.

Yamaha employs Partial CAV technology, where the drive gradually builds up to maximum writing speed. With Partial CAV, the drive maintains a constant angular velocity (turns per second, or spin rate) while the drive writes the inner portion of the disc. Since the drive writes the innermost circles of data first, the writing speed increases as the drive writes bigger circles of data.

Once the top writing speed is reached, the drive switches to constant linear velocity, which slows the spin rate with each larger circle of data to keep the writing speed constant. Competitors' CD-RW drives use Zone CLV to reach a CD-R write speed of 24X. These drives divide the disc into inner, middle, and outer zones and write data at a constant speed--16X, 20X, and 24X, respectively--within each zone.

The Yamaha drive's performance showed gains over our current Best Buy, TDK's 16/10/40 VeloCD ReWriter, and left its 16X/10X/40X sibling, the CRW2100EZ, in the dust. The 20X drive took just 4 minutes, 41 seconds to write our 650MB image file to CD-R--35 seconds less than the TDK. It also excelled at writing CD-R on the fly, taking 4 minutes, 49 seconds to write a 650MB folder of files. An excellent software bundle nicely rounds out this drive's attributes. If you want the fastest performance today, this is the drive for you. But keep in mind that even faster drives capable of writing CD-R at 24X are waiting in the wings.

While the Yamaha drive chipped away at performance records, Sony's $220 Double Density CD-RW CRX200E set the new benchmark for capacity. Although the rated speeds of this drive--12X/8X/32X--are far from cutting edge, the drive does have merit for those anxious to increase capacity today. To pack 1.3GB on a disc, Sony modified the format of conventional CDs; as you might expect, the 1.3GB disks can only be used in a Sony Double Density drive.

Performance when using ordinary CD-R and CD-RW media was on par with or better than that of other drives of similarly rated speeds; however, the drive's performance score on our tests was hurt by sluggish results for digital audio extraction and for installing Microsoft Office 2000 Small Business Edition. The drive smoothly passed our Double Density tests: We burned a folder with 1.28GB of files to test the drive's CD-R write speeds, and we burned a folder with 1GB of files to test the drive's CD-RW write speeds. The drive did well in these tests, taking 13 minutes, 2 seconds to burn from an image, and the same amount of time to burn on the fly; and it took 18 minutes, 16 seconds to packet-write to CD-RW.

Unfortunately, Double Density media is priced significantly higher than ordinary CD media, selling for about $2 per DD-R and $3 for DD-RW--more than the cheap 35-cent CD-R and $1 CD-RW media available today, but still a far cry from other, comparably-sized removable media. (Iomega's 1GB Jaz disks sell for $100 apiece.)

Prices Fall, Again

In spite of widespread price drops, this month's chart remains relatively stable: The new Yamaha drive nabbed second place, bumping the previous chart makers down a slot.

TDK's 16/10/40 VeloCD ReWriter drops $30 and holds onto the number one spot. Ranking third is AOpen's CRW1232A, coming in at $20 less. In fourth, Plextor's PlexWriter 16/10/40A shaved $15 off its price. Only Iomega's $180 CD-RW 12x10x32x held steady at the same price as last month.