CD-R and CD-RW drives: The bottom line

For the past week, readers have been posting to our (now closed) QuickTopic on CD-R and CD-RW drives, offering their opinions and recommendations. Over two-thirds of those posting were satisfied with their CD writers. However, glitches abound, especially with certain newer combinations of hardware and software. The most frequent complaint: Adaptec's slow schedule to update Toast (version 4) for Mac OS 9 and for newer hardware. Adaptec just released version 4.1, which is supposed to remedy many of these issues (but see next item). Several users did have success with version 3.x of Toast under Mac OS 9. One user also warned that "the DirectCD software that is included on the Toast OEM disk will not support USB drives." More than half of the users opted for rewritable (CD-RW) models, citing the flexibility of choosing either rewritable or write-once media, and of the relatively small difference in price between R and RW drives. A smaller but significant number of users said that CD-R was just fine, citing lower media cost. As for interfaces, again, there was a clear favorite: SCSI. Despite SCSI termination hassles, most users (including several who have used both interfaces) recommend SCSI over FireWire. A large number of users added a SCSI interface card rather than use their built-in FireWire ports, citing either the higher cost of FireWire drives compared to SCSI, or the lack of software available for FireWire drives. Judging from the responses, FireWire support is not yet completely baked. USB suffered a similar fate. In addition to slow speeds due to the restrictive USB bandwidth, software support was often considered inadequate, although some users did report no problems whatsoever. It appears that with both FireWire and USB, success depends on many factors falling into place. One user suggested testing a FireWire or USB drive for compatibility with your specific setup before making a purchase. When it came to selecting a drive, this user said it best; "Brand-wise, it doesn't matter too much. What matters is the drive mechanism your CD-R employs." Plextor mechanisms were considered the very best available, but were less common than Yamaha (most likely because of their higher price). Yamaha mechanisms were the overwhelming favorite among the majority of users. One user noted that "Yamaha is the only one that can put two tracks next to each other with no space between." Overall, the responses clearly favored SCSI interfaces, Yamaha or Plextor mechanisms, avoiding inferior quality media, and careful selection of compatible software. Users who consider other options are venturing into experimental territory.