The Acid Test:
The testbench:
AMD Duron 700 (@900MHz) CPU
Abit KT7 RAID motherboard
Kingmax 256Mb PC150 RAM
Enermax EG451P-VE 430w power supply
2x IBM 75GXP 45Gb hard drives (C:+E:, and F:, non-RAID'd)
1x IBM 34GXP 27Gb hard drive (D:)
1x Aopen 1232CRW CD rewriter
plus the usual irrelevant stuff, graphics, sound, network, etc.
I decided that using a RW disc to test multitasking while burning
was a good idea since I could easily re-use it without wasting
a CD if a coaster was created. The first "preliminary"
test I did was to copy some large-ish files to and from the source
drive while burning as well as to and from the hard drive I have
on the same channel as the burner (D: drive) and nothing went
wrong. The buffer hardly even dropped at all, being between 91%
and 94% almost all the time. This going smoothly I copied the
Quake2 PAK0.PAK file to the same source drive, while it was being
written to the CD. Again, the buffer never dropped below 91%.
I then decided to add in a couple more things, summarised as follows:
Copied Quake2 PAK0.PAK from E: to another folder on E: drive.
Copied same PAK0.PAK file to my D: drive.
Copied an old ICQ .IDX list (about 50Mb) to and from my C: drive,
thrown in for good measure (an old one in case Windows crashed
and screwed up the file).
Still 91-94% in the buffer. I then thought that it could be easier
for the hard drive to copy the same data it was writing because
it the heads wouldn't have to move very far. I also realised I'd
left my F: drive out of the equation. This being the case, I did
one of the most intensive filecopy tests I could think of, all
while burning the Quake2 PAK0.PAK file, as listed below:
Copied Half-Life PAK0.PAK file from E: to another folder on E:
drive.
Copied same PAK0.PAK file from E: drive to D: drive.
Copied entire Half-Life folder from E: drive to F: drive (to give
it small files to work with at the same time)
Copied my ICQ .IDX file to and from C: drive again (not enough
space to copy big Pak files onto it)
Most of these things finished before the CD burn did, so I just
re-did any that finished in the meantime. The buffer still never
dropped below 91%. There was so much hd activity going on that
every so often my system became very sluggish to respond to mouse
movements and clicks, but it didn't seem to bother Nero at all.
Once this was done, I decided to do a test that would get the
CPU and memory load up at the same time as the hard drive activity,
and that was to start several programs at around the same time.
I loaded up the following in quick succession, all with hot keys:
Internet Explorer
Outlook Express
ICQ
Bulletproof FTP
ACDSee
Closing down and re-loading them as they appeared throughout the
burn. As I had begun to expect, the buffer still never dropped
below 91%.
I was getting desperate. There had to be some way I could get
this drive to fall over! I started the burn of the Half-Life PAK0.PAK
file (300 meg or so) and then fired up Counter-Strike via Gamespy,
with the cache folder set to the same drive as Half-Life is on
(E:). The game loaded much slower than usual for obvious reasons,
and once in the game it was a bit jerky, but after a few minutes
I heard the familiar sound of the CD door opening and the beep
of Nero finishing a burn. I quit the game, checked the Nero window,
successfully done! There was only one test left to do - the defrag.
This, I am sad to say, didn't work. I did one defrag test of the
source drive and it worked, but then I realised that it was still
in the analyzing stage when the burn finished. I started the defrag
again, this time waiting until it actually started the defrag
before starting the burn. On these 2 defrag tests I tried burning
my Windows 2000 install files, about 300 meg. On the second "proper"
test it got 93% the way through, most of it with the buffer between
88% - 94% (the first time I ever saw it drop below 91%), before
bombing out with a buffer underrun error. That is still pretty
darned impressive. Of course I'm not going to guarantee that anyone
can burn about 280Mb while defragging before it will bomb with
an error, but by the same token it wouldn't surprise me if someone
managed to successfully burn an entire CD while defragging, especially
if defragging a non-source drive. Still, burning while defragging
is not something I'd recommend to anyone using this drive no matter
how fast their CPU and/or hard drives are.
Keep in mind though that I have such fast hard drives that they
should probably be expected to cope with most of the situations
above. If you've got slower hard drives I would try to keep the
data transfer to a minimum while burning. Of course there will
also be a slightly higher impact when burning a regular CDR at
12x but I can't imagine it would be much worse than my 10x tests.
I wouldn't do a defrag while burning a CD even if I did have burnproof,
to me it just "feels" wrong to be doing both those things
at once. As it is, I'm happy to burn CD's and not worry about
any sort of normal task causing it to fall over.
Bundled software/items:
Being a full retail pack, this drive comes with some extra stuff.
Quite a bit of extra stuff actually, I remember my old SCSI Yamaha
4x burner retail pack came with a lite version of Easy CD Creator
and 2 blank CD's. The guy gave me a $100 discount by removing
those items from the pack, thus turning it into an oem version.
But the 1232CRW has a much bigger/better set of goodies. This
is what you get in the box:
The drive is touted as an "MP3 Total Solution". As you might have guessed, this is only because of the software bundle - the drive itself does no more or less with MP3's than any other burner. Gamut 2000 is pretty much Winamp in a different guise. I had a small play around with Gamut 2000, and discovered that I didn't really like it. Upon uninstalling however, I noticed that mpeg files were still associated with it and thus un-openable! Fortunately it is a simple matter to restore the association with Media Player, but for anyone not familiar with file types this may be a bit of a problem.
Most
people with a burner will have tried Nero at some stage. It is
a nicely layed out and functional program with a nice drag-n-drop
interface. This version of Nero is the full licenced version and
can be updated for free via the web. Many people will also be
familar with Ghost, which is used for backing up entire partitions.
Ghost 6 introduces the ability to edit image files once they've
been created, so it's a shame that only version 5 comes with this
drive. The InCD Packet Writing software unfortunately doesn't
work under Windows 2000, so I couldn't test it. The manual doesn't
explain what it does and I can't find any information on it on
www.ahead.de,
but based on the name I assume it's something similar to Adaptec's
DirectCD.
Issues:
This burner doesn't work with my version of Easy CD Creator, which
is version 4.02c. I haven't had a chance to get an update so I'm
not sure if compatibility has been added, Nero is good enough
for me. This version of Nero has been much more reliable than
all previous versions, so I don't see a reason to look for a different
type of burning software. The location of the eject button is
a slight annoyance and the fold-down tray flap is a bit ugly,
but apart from that there are no real issues with this drive.
Conclusion:
I don't know how much of the burn stability is due to the hardware
and how much due to Nero/Win2k, but suffice to say Aopen have
put together a very solid package. As my tests illustrate you
probably don't need Burnproof. I'm not saying I wouldn't like
it, but I wouldn't like to pay $250 for it. You aren't going to
save yourself $250 in coasters by buying a Burnproof drive if
you have a fast CPU and hard drive. And if you don't have a fast
CPU or hard drive, you probably shouldn't be getting a 12x burner
regardless. For those of you in the market for a fast yet cheap
rewritable burner, I don't think you can go past this drive. Definite
thumbs up all round.
Pros:
One of the cheapest 32/12/10x burners available today.
Very solid for burning while multitasking when coupled with a
fast hard drive.
Excellent software bundle.
Does not require a cooling fan.
Supports 80 minute CD's.
Cons:
Kinda ugly.
Eject button indented a little too far from the edge.
Does not work with Easy CD Creator 4.02c.
No Burnproof.
Version of Ghost isn't the latest.