Apex Drives 

We checked out two drives from Apex. One was a CD-Rewriter

with 8x write, 4x rewrite and 32x read speeds; while the other was a 50x CD-ROM

drive. Both drives are very attractively priced. We ran our regular set of

benchmarks on them to see how they fared in performance, and compared the

results with those of other drives in their respective classes.

Apex CD-ReWriter

This

is an IDE drive that can easily be set up on your system. The drive comes
bundled with Adaptec Easy CD Creator 3.5, and we used the same to test it. The

drive took 32 minutes to burn 650 MB of data–consisting of a collection of

files of various sizes, both compressed and loose. This is relatively slow

compared to other drives in its class. Next, we created a real time ISO image of

the files on our hard drive and burnt this image onto a CD-Recordable. The whole

process took 33 minutes using the Apex, which is average. In copying 59.5

minutes of audio from a CD directly on to a CD-Recordable, the drive took 35

minutes, which is again average. It’s closest drive–the Kodak–tagged a

time of 33 minutes.

Moving on to the re-write tests, the Apex outshone all other

drives by taking only 26 minutes to fully format a CD-ReWritable. Its closest

rival was again the Kodak, with 29 minutes, with the LG being the slowest at 50

minutes. For all re-write tests, we used Adaptec DirectCD, which was given along

with the drive. We then transferred a 102 MB file to the CD-RW to check for

average throughput. This turned out to be 0.45 MB/sec, which is pretty good.

Overall, this CD-ReWriter is a good choice for homes and

small offices, and comes with a warranty of one year.

Apex CD-ROM drive

The

50x CD-ROM drive is an ordinary drive with two buttons on the front panel–for

play/skip and stop/eject, a headphone jack, and a volume control knob. We tested

it for file transfers, opening and closing the tray, measuring time taken to

read a CD, etc. We also checked its average seek time, and compared all results

with contemporary drives in its class. One good thing about the drive is that it’s

quick to open the tray even while the CD is inside and spinning. It’s also

zippy in recognizing and reading a CD when inserted. Also, you won’t have to

wait long when you’re using a CD that has autorun option. However,

transferring large amounts of data with this drive might be a little slow. It

clocked 2:57 minutes to transfer contents from a full CD onto a hard drive,

which was 40 seconds more than the Creative 52x drive. But if you transfer low

amounts of data, you won’t find much difference. It clocked an average access

time of 87.6 ms, which was 6 ms more than the 52x drives. At a price tag of Rs

2,100, this drive is a great buy, its shortcomings notwithstanding. It comes

with a warranty of one year.