[Table of Contents]


[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: [ARSCLIST] CD burner



Steven Smolian wrote:
I've looked at the various Plexitori and find such numbers as 52x, 48x and 24x Is 24 x as slowly as they will operate?

Steve Smolian

Fortunately, it is not.


The rated speed for writing is the highest speed at which, under ideal conditions, it will write well enough for the manufacturer's ad people to claim that it works. Any drive capable of writing faster than 1x (and those that cannot are relics in museums) allows selection of speed.

However (and you knew there would be one <G>), there are only specific speeds available for any drive, typically four or five. So a 24x writer may allow writing at, say, 4x, 8x, 16x and 24x - but not at any intermediate.

The situation with media is even worse. Consumer blanks have *no* maximum recorded in the ATIP and can therefore be written at any speed your drive supports. But from here on, life gets complicated. For example, most good drives have firmware which recognizes the most popular lines of media. The drive will then permit writing only at a workable speed for those media; for the ones it does not recognize, it will have a default maximum speed.

You may want to tool around in the CD-R FAQ or the primer at my WWW site. The primer is not up to date, but I haven't noticed anything actually wrong; the FAQ is more nearly current.

And just as a reminder: for most purposes, you will want to write at around 12-16x. A 52x writer is not as much faster as arithmetic suggests (I told you that it gets complicated) and error rates go up substantially as you increase speed above 16x.

Mike
--
mrichter@xxxxxxx
http://www.mrichter.com/


[Subject index] [Index for current month] [Table of Contents]