PlexWriter 16x from Plextor 

Its no surprise that the king of CD-ROM drives produces the best CD-Recorder. This model burns CD-R's at 16x, CDRW's at 10x, reads CDs at 40x, extracts digital audio at 40x max, supports 80 minute media, has a 140ms access time, and includes a 2 MB buffer. Make sure your media supports this high speed.

They include BURNPROOF to prevent buffer underruns and the resultant CDR frisbees. You be hard pressed to make a frisbee with this unit. Does an excellent job with digital audio extraction. We suggest you use this solely for burning disks and keep an inexpensive ATAPI CD-ROM drive in your system for CD-ROMs. Avoid the older models that does not handle CD-rewritable.

It includes Easy CD Creator and DirectCD. Also included is CDResQ that allows you to back up your hard disk onto multiple CDRs. The resultant backup is also bootable!

We recommend Adaptec's Easy CD Creator for mastering and Golden Hawk's CDRWin for CD-ROM duplication.

Attributes (Minimum): CD-R Write Rate (8x), CD-RW Write Rate (4x), Buffer Size (2 MB), Read Transfer Rate (24x), Interface (Ultra-SCSI), Access Time (100 ms), Software Bundle, and Digital Audio Extraction Speed (10x).
Alternates: Yamaha
Comments: 16x10x40 Started shipping in Feb 2001.

DC-390U2 Ultra2 SCSI Controller from Tekram 

There is no reason to pay more than about $100 for almost any add-in card, SCSI is no exception. Buy this card to add any SCSI devices to your computer. Hard drives, removables, scanners and tape drives will all run at full speed. SCSI is good for high end applications requiring the fastest drives available or heavy multitasking.

Newer Ultra-160 SCSI cards are great for workstations and servers where software RAID 0/1 are used, as no single hard drive as of 2001, can transfer data faster than Ultra-2 SCSI's 80 MB/s limit. Ultra-2 SCSI cards also require special cabling and terminators, further driving up costs, so make sure the controller includes them.

Higher end servers should use hardware RAID cards from Adaptec, Compaq, and Dell.

Attributes (Minimum): Speed (Ultra), Interface Type (PCI), Cable Bundle (50, 68pin), Software Bundle.
Alternates: Promise Technology Advansys
Comments: Comparable Adaptec 2940U2W is a lot more

IBM Deskstar 60GXP from IBM Corp 

This is the drive for the user that seeks high performance, high capacity, along with a decent price. Network file servers should use SCSI based drives.

High performance 3.5 drive, 7200 RPM, Ultra ATA/66 hard drive. It should take you a couple days to fill its 60 gigabytes of storage! Specs include 8.5 ms seek, 2MB cache, upto 40 MB/sec sustained data transfer rate, and SMART-3. Remember you have to back it up too.

Includes a Drive Fitness Test to ensure the drive is running correctly, and that you do not send a good drive in for service.

Beware that you may have to disable Ultra ATA/66 on the drive to get it to work right on some motherboards. These drives mainly go to the big PC vendors, so they are hard to find.

Also available in 20 to 60 GB capacities.

Attributes (Minimum): Capacity (8 GB), Transfer rate (Ultra), Interface type, buffer size (1 MB), access time (8 ms), rotation rate (7200), diagnostic features (SMART), warranty.
Alternates: Maxtor DiamondMaxPlus Family
Comments: IBM 60GXP replaced the 75GXP it in March 2001. Transfer rates slightly faster.

PNY CD-R from PNY 

You can buy CDRs really cheap now. These disks are extremely low cost and of decent quality. Silver reflective layer resists oxidation. Brand name CDR media at a fair price.

Available in CD-RW, 74 minute, and 80 minute versions. Sold in bulk spindles and also individually.

We stick to 80 minute 12x or faster media.

Attributes (Minimum): Capacity (74 min), Speed Rating (8x), Substrate Type, Jewel case.

Kodak CD-R Silver Ultima from Eastman Kodak Company 

You can buy CDRs really cheap these days, but when you really need the data to be there when you restore it years from now, you need to buy some quality media. These Kodak disks include the Infoguard Protection System to protect your data from scratches and fingerprints. Silver reflective layer resists oxidation. Brand name CDR media at a fair price. Projected 100 year life.

Available in gold, silver, audio, inkjet printable, CD-RW, and 80 minute versions. Sold in bulk spindles and also individually. We prefer to buy them with jewel cases.

Attributes (Minimum): Capacity (74 min), Speed Rating (8x), Substrate Type, Jewel case.
Alternates: Mitsui Gold
Comments: Some older Yamaha200/400 drives may have problems with this media, although our 100 series does not.

CD-ROM Drive

Toshiba XM-6702B from Toshiba 

Toshiba has consistently built some of the highest quality CD-ROM drives. They read all discs, operate quietly, extract audio quickly, and have no compatibility problems. This 48x drive has a 78ms access time, 128k buffer.

Faster drives are better at copying larges files and doing large database lookups from CD-ROM, but do not speed software installations by much. Look for drives that can read CD-RW media, which is the case with anything faster than about 24x. You should not pay over $50 for the drive.

Good vendors include: Mitsumi, Sony, Teac, Toshiba, and Matsushita. If you want fast high-quality digital audio extraction and special features, get a high end SCSI CD-ROM. We have no-name 40x and 50x noisy drives that extract poor quality audio at a lowly 4x. We think most users will be find with 24-32x drives as they are quieter than faster drives.

Attributes (Minimum): Transfer Rate (24x), Interface (Ultra-DMA IDE), Access Time (100 ms), CD-RW read capability, Spin Noise, and Digital Audio Extraction Speed (10x).