Drive-Storage Reviews

The Alera Copy Cruiser... is a wonderful device. You'll double your CD collection in no time and soon run out of room to store them! Your friends will get used to you lugging this machine around, badgering them to borrow their CDs.It is very easy to operate and will copy a typical audio CD in about 5 minutes, copying at a rate of 16X, the fastest recommended speed. I also tried it with a Photo CD and it copied nicely also, so you can make copies of your Photo CDs for family members.A very sturdy and user friendly gadget. The box has handles and is a neat way to transport it around for your purposes. Can't recommend this high enough.

This product is amazing I've made 3 cds so far and theyve all turned out great. This product is well worth the money, I can make a hole cd in 20 minutes, I strongly recommend this item. The Edit track works great, Very easy to use.

This CD Copy Cruiser is simple to use. Put the source CD in the top tray. Put a blank CD in the bottom tray. On the top panel, select copy. Then select the speed (max 48x). Hit the okay button and within minutes you've got a perfect copy.

Altough there are extra features that allow you to create custom music cds, I just needed to duplicate145 data CDs for a client (two sets at that) and was finished before I knew it.

Here's an idea of how fast it is. When I started this project, I spent 16 hours and two computers and was only able to duplicate 64 CD-ROMS. When I got the CD Copy Cruiser, I was able to copy those same 64 CD-ROMS in 3.5 hours!

And the best part of this device is that it frees up your computer.

At this price, the card alone is a good deal. However, this pkg includes the USB minidrive, which allows you to use the card as a highly portable storage device that is recognized by WinXP without any drivers or installation required. This is really handy for many things, such as moving MP3 files (say to a friend's PC) or for copying .txt files for papers that need editing or safeguarding.

XP recognized and installed flawlessly. No digital signature required! Handy 4 foot USB cable for connecting behind pcs. I've looked at many sites that sell this drive and it was never obvious if the 256mb flash card was included. It is. My unit was gray (not blue like most ads show) with a green led. It's a versatile drive because the flash cards work with other devices, like my Rio S50 MP3 player. And different sized cards can be used, 64mb, 128mb, etc. Hardest thing was getting the package open! No different than any electronic gadget. Be careful with the blister plastic. 2 year warranty on the drive, lifetime on flash card. Highly recommended.

Executive summary: 1.44 floppies are just not cutting it. I work with clients and don't want to lug around a CD burner to move files from my laptop to/from their network. I also don't always want to lug my laptop home. Enter Simpletech's Bonzai USB mini drive. It is awesome. If you are looking for high capacity and expandable computer storage in a small, portable, USB-based, no install hassle package, buy the Bonzai USB mini-drive now.

A few details . . .

Insert it into a USB port, wait about 2 seconds and WIN2K and WinXP (home and professional) pop up an acknowledgement of a new removable disk that it found. You use the USB drive just like a hard drive (drag and drop, etc.).

Here are some factoids I wish the product description (or picture) would have told me:
1) A 4 foot USB extension cable is included, which in my book eliminates any negative dealing with the fact that the USB ports on some computers are close together or very tight. (BTW I have a Compaq Presario with 2 USB's on the front and although it is tight the Bonzai works fine there without the extension, even with my mouse plugged in right beside it). Having to carrying a small cable is just not that big of deal folks.
2) It is very small. 2 1/2" long including the USB plug. 1 1/4" wide. 1/2" deep.
3) It is very light. About the weight of one Oreo Double Stuff cookie :)
4) The USB plug has a cap.
5) The case is heavy plastic.
6) A lanyard (i.e big shoestring looking thing that goes around your neck like a Referee's whistle) is included.
7) I have a 60MB zip file on my Bonzai right now which unzips faster than those on my hard drive. Did I mention the Bonzai is fast?
8) The whole thing seems solid and well made.

BTW, a guy I work with and I did some research. We both concluded that Bonzai is the answer to our goal of a slick way to quickly move files between computers, with zero install requirements (at least on Win2K and WinXP). He is very envious of me right now since he opted for the Sandisk Cruzer instead of the Bonzai (because Best Buy didn't have the Bonzai). I picked Bonzai and was delighted to find that amazon.com has it. The Cruzer is about 4-5 times bigger, and doesn't feel nearly as solid in my view.

I opted for the 128MB model instead of the 256MB or 512MB models for two simple reasons: 1) 128MB is enough for me for now (equal to 88 diskettes), 2) the price of Secure Disk (SD) is bound to keep tumbling so I'll pick up a 256 and/or 512 once the 1GB (and beyond) SD's come out and drive down their cost of their little brother and sister :)

Enjoy the Bonzai!

Has anyone tried BENQ DW800A 8X DVD burner? I would be gratful
if you could send me your idea.

iwylu@hotmail.com

This burner works fine for data, music and movies. Comes with required accessories for installation and it was quick to install. Working good with Win XP, no issues.

Have used it with 3 different brands of DVD+R media and played movies burned in 2 different DVD players, no compatibility problems so far. Finally we are getting some good DVD burners!

This DVD burner works great. Flawless perfomance and easy installation. Only con is that it is only DVR+R/RW and not dual format. But for making movie backups and for data backups it works just fine.

Its an affordable DVD burner with reliable performance. Go get one!

This is a great unit for backups and read/write data. The throughput is one of the best I've seen for removable storage devices. The only wait time is at the disk spin boot up/down. Make sure you set your preferences for no spin down if you access the Jaz often.

I've had mine over a year and it hasn't given me any problems. The disks perform flawlessly - they should at the premium price. I use it for file and application backups - both PC (98/NT) and Mac. I haven't had any problems with read/write transfer. If you do any video or animation - this is a must buy, unless you intend to lug around an external harddrive. Personally, I've had great product experiences with all 'external' Iomega products. Internal products are another story...

My only pet peave is the mega thick cord if you go SCSI. 1) Because the standard cord that it ships with, it limits the places you can place your drive - especially if you have no case cover. 2) It is a true struggle to wrestle it gently without tearing out your scsi card + your other daisy chained peripherals.

The price for this unit is very good - however, I've seen 1gig Jaz for around $100 refurbished. Be wary though, I've seen the 1 gigs in many repair shops (I'm unsure of what the symptoms are though). Also, watch out for the transformer - there was a recall about a year ago on the units catching fire; check Iomega's site for this info.

This piece of equipment is a MUST... Not only is it an integral part of my system now and with the "traveler" it is totaly portable from one place to another without having to have a SCSI interface available... ;-)

As always Iomega has the best products. They always make a reliable product. They have great support for their products and this is no exception.

This is an extremely fast 2GB drive that is faster than 90% hard drives out there.

I picked up a 24X Plextor... to replace my 12X Plextor!
I was hoping that Plextor's 24X was as good as it's previous line and I was not disappointed! I have burned everything from backing my documents, to WAV/MP3 CDs!

The Plexor 24/10/40's reading capabilities are also amazing. I was in a roll-over accident, in which my favorite disc was damaged. I pulled the CD which refused to play in four other players, and burned a copy of it, which plays all the way through!

I love these things!!!

i HAD THIS PLEXTOR INSTALLED WHEN I PURCHASED MY NEW SYSTEM AND THE THING WORKES GREAT. YOU HAVE TO TRY THIS WRITER, ITS UNREAL.

I have always said, in the event of a nuke holocaust, the only thing left will be plextors and roaches. These drives are the best, NOTHING IS BETTER THAN A PLEX!!!

Great CD-RW Drive, fast and relatively quiet...and that cool blue light

It DOES do everything it claims and then some! This burner will NOT make coasters out of your disk and with blue and purple l.e.d.s it is definitely a welcome change to the sea of green lights that cover my desk. The disk T@2 DOES work fine and is a pretty cool holigraphic type effect on the record side of the disk. It comes with a slew of software, the Nero alone is worth $50. You just CANNOT go wrong with this recorder, it is excellent ...! I am completely satisfied with mine and recommend it to EVERYONE who wants the best. ...

To complain about the burned images that this drive can produce is like complaining that your Ferrari's sunroof opens a little too slow :-)

This drive's "Wow" factor will not wear out anytime soon. To geeks, it's incredible that this drive has finally made a consumer priced laser etching system! And to everyone else, these images look sweet! If you look at a T@2'ed image as if it were a Hologram (like the one on your Visa/Mastercard) you can see it just fine. Yamaha has rated the image quality at 250dpi, which for comparison sake is 3 times sharper than any image you find on the web. The images are faint, but not too faint, and it's totally worth the added cost, in my opinion.

The best way to get the sharpest image is to use a CD-R made with Azo dye (the data side looks metallic blue). Yamaha sells these kind of CD's, again at a little higher price than average CD-R discs.

Even without the special features, this drive would be a winner. So for a few more dollars out of your pocket, you get all these incredible features, plus an unbeatable CD-RW drive.

This model is black, but Amazon also carries the White colored version of the drive, the Yamaha CRW-F1ZE.

This is the best DVD+R Cruiser I have found. I got the best software available. Definately a buy. I gave my HP to a relative.

This DVD+R Cruiser not only supports writing to DVD+RW media, but also adds DVD+R capability. The Alera DVD+R Cruiser is an external drive which can easily be connected to any computer without the need for complex installations or opening the computer's housing. Like its predecessor, the drive is equiped with Alera's versatile A-Connect technology. This means that you can choose from a variety of connection options to fit your system's needs. The drive comes with a High Speed USB (USB 2.0) connection kit by default. Optionally, you may connect the PCMCIA, Firewire or Firewire for Macintosh (comes with Charismac Discribe software) cable kits. The combined value of the software that comes with this drive when bought separately (approx US$ 700 !!) will greatly exceed the price of the DVD+R Cruiser. Put otherwise: you'll get a free DVD-recorder when you buy this professional DVD authoring software kit selected by Alera.

I'm very impressed to see that Alera - again - has put many efforts in offering a DVD+RW drive/software combination that really stands-out of the crowd. When you buy this drive, you not only get top-notch technology (the fastest DVD recording solution around, packed in a slick-looking, easy to connect external casing), but also a perfectly integrated, best-of-class software suite that offers all of the features a videographer, professional DVD studio or a demanding home-user will ever need for his or her DVD creation needs.

Purchased this Alera Technologies 40x speed 1:7 CD Copy Tower for duplicating my tech manuals which completed my job within minutes! Not only did I save time but I saved money by no longer having to outsource the duplicating job.

Also being a part time DJ I was floored when I discovered this product featured "Audio Edit Track" which enabled me to select several tracks from an audio CD to make my own favorite compilations. Better yet there's NO PC Required!!

This workhorse not only took care of my full time job projects but it also saved me from carrying a full crate of audio CD's to my next DJ gig!

Carlos

More and more business, government and education offices, musicians, record publishers, audio and video professionals, software and game developers, graphic artists, churches and other private organizations, are looking for a cost effective means to duplicate CDs to distribute to customers, clients, employees, students, organization members, etc. The need to duplicate CDs in your own office, where you have total control of the schedules, quantity and content has been growing since the first CD-Recorders came on the scene. Until now, the necessary equipment has been cumbersome, hard to operate, and very expensive.

Alera Technologies, the leader in desktop optical disc duplicator technology, has established a reputation with its 1:1 duplicators as being the company that offers duplicators with the performance and features required by professionals, at consumer prices. Applying our experience, with an in-depth understanding of the needs of the professional user, Alera Technologies has developed the CD Copy Tower family of CD Duplicators with the speed and control features needed in a professional environment. .

The CD Copy Tower CD Duplicators incorporate 40x Alera Technologies CD recording and duplicating technology. CD Copy Towers are the professional, yet simple, solution for creating volumes of CD copies quickly and easily; For example, the 1:7 Copy Tower 40 can make multiple copies of a typical CDs typically less than 3 minutes (up to 7 copies with the 1:7). The actual time to copy the information a source CD to CD-R blank discs, start to finish, will vary due to the quality of the discs being used, write process initialization tests by the duplicator controller, writing lead in/lead out information, etc.

CD Copy Tower stand-alone CD duplicators do not require a computer for any of their duplicating or editing functions. Since CD Copy Tower 's do not require connection to a PC they do not interfere with valuable workstation activity. There is no additional hardware or software required to make copies, no set up other than plugging one in and turning on the power. There is no software to load and no need to attach extra cables, etc. to your computer. You can make as many quick copies as you need. CD Copy Tower 's are very compact units that take up little desktop space and can be easily moved

With the ease of operation of the CD Copy Tower , there is no concern as to who can operate the machine, what skill level the operator possesses, or how much training will be needed. No special computer, multimedia or mastering experience is needed to make copies. For the normal copy job, you simply load the CD to be copied in the CD-ROM drive, load the a blank CD in the CD-Recorder, Select Copy, Select the copy speed and in a few minutes you have an exact copy of your source CD

I was looking for a way to back up my DVDs here in the harsh desert environment of Kuwait, and I needed a reliable DVD burner to do it. I knew I wouldn't be able to call up tech support or customer service and wait half an hour to talk to a technician, so I did the research and paid extra for the Plextor, and I'm glad I did. After 4 months it has performed just advertised with no glitches. Installation was easy, no additional drivers neccessary for my Dell 1100 laptop. I have burned several "coasters" (bad disks), but have since determined that the problem was that the disks themselves were at fault and not the burner. An added plus is that the "full" version of Roxio Easy CD/DVD creator is included, which includes features like cross fading. Overall an excellent and rugged product and worth the money. Minor gripe with Amazon in that they won't ship this to an APO address, but otherwise a very good deal.

- No installation: simply plug into a USB port
- Simple operation: fool-proof
- Included software is just so-so, useable but very limited. You may need to buy a DVD copy/create software so that you can compress more data into a standard 4.7 GB DVD blank or skip bad sectors if needed.

- This burner favors DVD+R (8X write) over DVD-R (4X) so buy your media accordingly.
- It will take 15-18 minutes to fill a DVD-R (2hrs of video) at 4X speed and about 8-10 minutes for DVD+R. I had burned roughly 100 DVDs so far and the write time has been very consistent. (Data caching/creation is an entirely different story as it varies greatly depending on data types, compression needs and machine CPU speed.)

Just don't see how the previous reviewer created a two-hours home movies DVD in 4 minutes??? That would be 20 MB/sec or 14X write speed. Wow!

This is product is TOTALLY AWESOME!
I Burned my 2 hour home movie in less than 4 minutes!!!!
Perfect quality exactly like the original!!
Well worth the $$$
I HIGHLY Reccomend this product !!!!!!

The features of this drive makes other CDRWs look like child's play. I purchased this drive with the sole intention of making quality backups of my music CDs.

But, I've yet to get this drive to work right.

Techie-speak warning...

I first installed this drive in "slave" mode--as the second drive of the IDE controller--and it worked in mode PIO-4; very slow. So I purchased an ATA133 IDE controller (just for the burner) to have it work in the recommended DMA mode. That didn't help. It would not burn faster than 24x.

I tried several brands and manufacturers of CDRs; both silver and blue azo dye. My other OEM CDRW/DVD drive (Samsung SM-352B) works like a champ with only a 2MB buffer, yet this one at twice the price has been a headache. So, I'm reinstalling WinXP before I send this in for repair...

Update Sep 23, 2003:
Reinstalled WinXP and the problem remained. After exchanging several e-mails with Plextor Support, and several jumper settings later they agreed to replace the drive. Received the replacement--a new unit actually--and installed it. Turned on the machine and there it was in DMA-mode. Uneventful. Plug-and-play. The way it should have been out-of-the-box. It appears I had a lemon.

Although I am taking a star for the bad experience, I am quite satisfied to have found support to be technically knowledgeable of the product, and hassle-free in getting the problem resolved quickly.

The new burner has also turned out excellent.

I agree with Bob Carpenter, i have been using Plextor burners all my life, my first plextor was a 12x scsi, second was a IDE 40x, now i have the 52x. The quality is second to non, plus i never had a problem burning or ripping at max speed.

Plextor drives r the best for making perfect copies. I tried liteon retail and oem. plus samsung burners but they were no good. I used these three to copy the Diablo II play disc and the Command & Conquer 2 cds, a total of 2 tries on each drive, even though they finish burn, when using the cds they dont start the game. But when i use the plextor + the clonecd software i got no problems and playable copied games, for this reason i never had to hack any of the games.

After receiving my Plextor Premium and burning About 25 discs within three days, I have yet to make one coaster. Awesome speed and quality.