Sony’s Sleek Combo Drive

This sleek combo drive can function both as a CD-RW and DVD drive, supporting 20x write, 8x rewrite, 24x read and 8x DVD speeds. It supports the latest USB 2.0 technology. You’ll need to install a USB 2.0 card in case your motherboard does not support this technology. The drive weighs only 230 g and its dimensions (WxHxD) are 129x18x134 mm, which make it extremely portable for mobile professionals. The drive supports a variety of formats, which include CD-ROM XA,

DVD video, Photo CD, CD-DA, CD-I, Video CD, CD and CD text. It works on Win 98 SE/2000/Me/XP. 

We tested the drive on our standard test bed of a PIII/800 processor, 128 MB RAM and ASUS CUSL2-M motherboard running Win 2000. We used Nero 5.5 and InCD packet-writing software for our tests. The media used was Imation’s 24x CD-R, Verbatim’s 10x CD-RW. In the CD-R tests, the drive took 6:53 (min:sec) to burn 650 MB of data from the hard drive onto the CD-R disk. It took 6:26 sec to create an audio CD and 11:8 sec to copy 15 tracks of audio files from a 52x CD-ROM drive on to the CD-R disk. In rewriting, the drive took 20 mins to format a CD-RW disk, giving an average throughput of 1.07 MB/Sec, which is good considering its 8x CD-RW speeds. To test its DVD capabilities we transferred 652 MB of data from a DVD drive on to the hard disk. The drive was able to do this in 3 mins 50 secs, giving it an average throughput of 2.8 MB/Sec, which is good considering its an 8x DVD speed.

The Bottom Line. Since the drive’s rated burning and reading speeds are lower than ordinary desktop drives, its performance is also slightly lower. The real utility of this drive, however, comes

from its lightweight, small size, and support for multiple functions. So, it’s a useful drive for mobile professionals. You would, however, need a machine that’s USB 2.0 compliant, or buy the appropriate card. 

Neelima Vaid at PCQ Labs