Iomega’s 40x CD-ReWriter

This internal IDE drive from Iomega has a 40x write, 12x re-write and 40x read speeds. It supports Win 95/98/2000/ Me/XP/ NT4 with Service Pack 4 or higher. It supports a range of formats including CD-ROM XA, CD-DA, bootable CD, photo CD, video CD, CD extra, mixed mode CD, CD text.

We tested the drive on a Win 2000 machine with PIII/800 MHz processor, 128 MB RAM and an ASUS CUSL2 motherboard. We used Nero 5.5 and Nero InCD packet-writing software that came with the drive. The tests were done on a 32x CD-Rs and 10x CD-RWs, since 40x CDR and 12x CDRW media are still not available in the market. The drive, however, can burn on 32x media without giving any errors. In fact, it didn’t give any problems even though we kept its burning speed setting at 40x. 

Coming to performance, the drive took only 4 mins 35 secs to burn 650 MB of data. It took 3 mins 56 secs to create an audio CD, which was the fastest we have seen so far. In CD-to-CD copy, that is, in copying 15 tracks of audio from a 52x drive onto the CD-R disk, the drive took 6 mins 45 secs. In CD-RW tests, the drive did well taking 11 mins to format a CD-RW, which was again the fastest we have seen so far. It’s average throughput came to 1.5 MB/sec. 

The Bottom Line. The drive is priced at  Rs 7,500 and comes with a one-year warranty. Its price and performance (on 32x media) makes it a good buy. It would probably give better results on 40x media, whenever they become available.

Neelima Vaid at PCQ Labs