Plextor PX-W4012S (SCSI)

In this part of the review we’ll take a look at the SCSI PlexWriter’s CD-ReWriting abilities and its Mount Rainier (CD-MRW) support. For both tests we used Ahead’s InCD version 3.5.20.0. For the erase tests we used Elaborate Bytes’ CloneCD version 4.2.0.2.

Packet Writing:

We formatted a Plextor 650MB high-speed CD-RW disc which was delivered with the Plextor package. We fired up InCD, inserted the empty CD-ReWriteable disc in the recorder and measured the time it took from inserting the disc till it was ejected again. The InCD option to ‘Format disc to CD-MRW’ (Mt. Rainier) was disabled. We will do the CD-MRW tests later on this page of our review.

When formatting was complete we measured the time it took for the drive to write our test folder of data (containing 400MB (419.791.239 bytes)). In the table below we’ve summed it all up for you:

From the results you can see that we had a small problem when writing our tests data since the PlexWriter needed far more time than the other 12X recorders we’ve reviewed. To test what the problem was we simply used a Plextor PX-W4012A drive to write the same test data. This drive also needed far more time than usual (4m:34s vs. 5m:51s). So the problem probably lies with the used InCD version and not with the PlexWriter. Let’s check how fast the drive can write the same test data using Nero Burning Rom (and the same (erased) Plextor CD-RW disc):

From the screenshot you can see that this time the PlexWriter only needed 4 minutes and 24 seconds to write our test data. Let’s continue with our CD-MRW tests:

Mount Rainier Tests:

Since Plextor’s PX-W4824A drive all new Plextor drives seem to support the Mount Rainier format and the SCSI PlexWriter is no exception. Let’s see how well it performs when using InCD version 3.5.20.0. If you want to read more on the CD-MRW format please read our Mount Rainier article .

As you can see from the achieved results the Plextor SCSI writer is performing very well. Although the VisionTek Xtasy 48X (based on the Lite-On LTR-48125W) is faster when copying the data to the disc, the Plextor was faster when reading back the data. Overall an excellent result.