[Indigo Boy]

Outpost has the QUE! 8x4x32x Ext FireWire CD-RW listed for $169.00 after rebate. Does anyone have experience with this drive? It seems like a good price for a Firewire CD-RW drive.

I don't feel as if I need the fastest drive out there (some of the faster QUE!s are also on rebate), but I have heard that Firewire is much better for this sort of thing than USB. I'm mainly looking at this as backup medium, but maybe I'll get into burning audio CDs as well. Thoughts, anyone?

Thanx.

[Severed Hand of Skywalker]

I know the Que 12x drive are really good. See if the 8x has burn proof.
USB burning sux! It is hard to burn an Audio CD faster then 2x on USB.

With my FireWire burner I can make Audio CD's at 12x with no errors.

FireWire rules.

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[Indigo Boy]

Outpost also has the 12x10x32 Ext Firewire CD-RW (w/50-pk CD-R spindle and CD Case) for 234.95 after rebate. Neither the 8x nor 12x mention anything about burnproof.... Are these older models, perhaps, and that is why they don't have burnproof? Or maybe they have it, but the copy doesn't mention it...?

[lucylawless]

Burn-proof is BS. It just means that if the buffer under-runs, it can stop and wait for the data stream to catch up. The existence of Toast 5 (which can burn in the background without Burn-proof; it's called an asynchronous burn) completely negates the need for Burn-Proof.

The only feature I might hold out for is Disc-at-Once (DAO) burning. That means that while burning an audio CD, it can burn the whole bugger all at once, not stopping after each track, which is called Track-at-Once (TAO). With DAO, you can set pauses between tracks that are different from the standard 2 seconds.

My only CD-RW is a Que Firewire 4x4x24 (with no burn-proof, and no DAO). I burn discs all the time with toast 5 (in the background), and I've only had 1 buffer under-run, and that was while I was copying 2 large files to a firewire hard drive

[chris v]

I've got the Que 8x4x32, and it seems fine. Toast4.1.2 supports DAO on my drive, though it doesn't have the "burn proof" feature. Maybe the newer ones do, but if you test the track before you burn, (it just takes a sec or two) you don't usually end up making coasters.

The only times I've had burns fail is when I've done stupid stuff, like try to lauch Illustrator when it's burning, or forgetting to turn off the RC5 client, and having it automatically download W/U's in the middle of a burn.

With the price of blank CD-R's what it is, it's not much of a concern, anyway.

A lot of what will determine how fast you can write will be your internal CD ROM. if it's got slow access times, you won't be able to burn as fast-- for example, I can only burn a 2 or 4X from my CD ROM, but when I write from an internal hard disk, 8X is no problem.

Avoid USB.

CV

[iPaul UK]

I have this Que FireWire 8X/4X/32X burner.. And it's been great. There used to be a lot of problems reported with this drive. All of which I suspect were because people didn't read the instructions and install the software properly. But I have had zero problems with this drive. And for the money you say you can buy it for.. I'd get snap it up right away! Mine cost me a whopping £375 here in England when i bought it, thats around $550!! A massive price i'm sure you will agree! Still a great burner tho tho.. Faster drives than this are not really needed, as disks burned any faster will not last nearly as long and are also far more likely to contain error's. Besides.. An 8X drive will still pop you out a full 650Mb disc in around 9 minutes. Should be fast enough for most people, surely!?

[Severed Hand of Skywalker]

Burn Proof is NOT B.S. If you use itunes or Disk Burner it is great.
Look to see if it says Plexor in the description. that is the other name for Burnproof.

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[Paulos]

Plextor does not mean burn-proof... it is the name of the mechanism... it is a brand name, that is all.

I have a Que 8x 4x 32x

it has NO burn proof, it CAN write DAO... I HIGHLY recomend it... Just makes sure you use toast 4.12 or 5 and you will love this burner.

[Indigo Boy]

Thanks, everyone, for your input!

Still not sure what I'm going to do at this point. The rebates run for a little while, so there is not great hurry. I'll probably do a little more research before taking the plunge.

Thanks again.

[Severed Hand of Skywalker]

Originally posted by Paulos:
Plextor does not mean burn-proof... it is the name of the mechanism... it is a brand name, that is all.

Right, so if they drive says that it has a Plextor mechanism that means the drive has burn proof.

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[Paulos]

> Right, so if they drive says that it has a Plextor mechanism that means the drive has burn proof.

Nope, mine is a plextor but has no burn proof. some do, some don't.