LaCie CRD-R800S

Burn a CD-R disc in under 9 minutes with LaCie's CRD-R800S 8x20x CD-R drive

Product:  8x20x (external SCSI drive based on a Sanyo CRD-R800S mechanism)

From: LaCie (www.lacie.com)

Price: US$449 (street); includes Adaptec CD-R software for Windows and Macintosh.

Pros: Good software. Excellent performance (we burned a 650MB disc in about 9 minutes!). 2MB buffer. Heavy-duty case.

Cons: Doesn't support CD-RW (rewritable) discs.

Tech Specs: Tray design Sanyo CRD-800S CD-R mechanism in a heavy-duty case includes two 50-pin SCSI connectors; Terminator switch; pushbutton SCSI ID select; stereo RCA audio jacks.

Included Adaptec Software:

• Toast 3.5.6 for Mac
• DirectCD for Mac
• Easy CD Creator v3.5b for Windows 95, 98 and NT
• Direct CD for Windows 95, 98 and NT.

Introduction

LaCie has strengthened its reputation, since its early days as a Mac-centric drive supplier back in the late '80s -- a period in which Apple's then-flagging fortunes led to LaCie being bought and subsequently resold by Quantum, by building high-quality products. This drive is as good an example of the LaCie recipe for success as any. Housed in a stylish, ultra heavy-duty case, the 8x20x CD-R drive is the fastest CD-R drive we've tested at TCP Labs yet -- and, thanks to its large 2MB buffer, one of the most reliable, too.

As owners of older recordable CD drives know all too well, the lack of a sufficiently large buffer can lead to a disk-trashing phenomenon known as a "buffer underrun" -- typically caused by an interruption of some sort during the disc writing process. If the system can't continue supplying data during the interruption (e.g., from a buffer), the write operation fails and the disc becomes just another expensive coaster.

While this can still happen with this (or virtually any) drive, its hardware design and the excellent CD-writing software (in our opinion, the very best on the market) will minimize the grief.

Setting up the unit was no problem on either a PC or a Mac. Note however, that the drive is a SCSI ("small computer system interface") device and, thus, requires either a Mac or a Windows 95, 98 or NT-based PC with a SCSI connector. At one time, all Macs included SCSI, but the latest iMac and Blue and White G3 models have eschewed SCSI in favor of other interface standards. Most PCs lack SCSI. However, a SCSI card can be added to most PC and Mac models for around $100. You'll need a SCSI cable too, for this external device -- the back of the drive  includes a pair of large 50-pin SCSI connectors, allowing you to daisy chain several other SCSI devices to your computer. As long as each SCSI device has a different ID (in the range 0-7) and the last device is "terminated," it is a snap to configure. The 8x20x drive, incidentally, includes a switch to set "termination" on or off, as required.

And what is "termination" in this context? Well, imagine that the chain of SCSI cables connecting the various devices to your computer has a signal that careens down the wire from device to device. If the last section of the SCSI chain is not electrically dampened with resistors, the signal hits the last device and, in essence, bounces back, causing confusion in the SCSI chain. This can lead to devices not working properly. Adding a terminator -- either a clip-on "terminator" plug or via a switch, as on this drive, causes the signal to be deadened when it hits the end of the chain, solving the problem. And, as an aside, Adaptec confirms that, although a slow (8 bit) SCSI device connected to a fast (16 bit) SCSI card connected to other fast SCSI devices will slow down other devices in the chain, it only has this effect if the slow device is turned on. Hence, "narrow" SCSI devices such as this one are ideally suited for use in external enclosures.

Supported OSes

Windows 95, 98 and NT are supported by the included Adaptec software. Personally, we've had better success with the Easy CD Creator package than with DirectCD. DirectCD "write" operations, in our tests, fail or exhibit other problems in the order of 10 percent of the time. Writing discs with Easy CD Creator, on the other hand, is very close to 100 percent reliable.

Although Toast is still our favorite CD recording package on the Macintosh, we would rate its failure/problem rate at about 10 percent, as well. In fact, the very first disc we wrote on our test machine -- a 240 MHz Power Mac -- while evaluating this drive failed its verification process after being written by Toast. In comparison, we've only has one error in over 20 discs recorded with Easy CD Creator running under Windows 98, and even then, the error didn't cause any data loss.

We tested the drive successfully under Windows 2000 beta 3, too. Although the Easy CD Creator package doesn't officially support Windows 2000, Adaptec has released an unsupported "beta" version that supports this OS. (Details at http://webcheckup.adaptec.com/ecdc-win2k/)

Limitations

As mentioned earlier, this drive does not support CD-RW media. That's no big deal to us. It's more expensive (but getting more reasonable all the time, with current prices as low as $4 per disc at Costco) anyway; we don't worry too much about whether have filled up a $2 CD-R disc or not. Can't rewrite a CD-R? Who cares?

Cost per Megabyte

With media costs as low as C$1.60 for 650MB CD-R media, a CD-R represents a nearly ideal storage solution for those who need to exchange files with other users, or who want to minimize ongoing costs.

Conclusion

This drive should be on your short list if you are shopping for a speedy and reliable CD recorder. We'd also recommend looking at products based on the Ricoh MP6200S (CDRW), Plextor PX-R412C and Teac CD-R55S mechanisms.

For Additional Reading:

• Recording audio CDs
• Recording CD ROMs
• For info on CD-Recording, see http://www.fadden.com/cdrfaq/.
• Drive info
• http://www.cdmediaworld.com/