It doesn?t seem like it was that long ago when CD Writers were first introduced.  I recall my first one, a 4X drive which was at the time top of the line.  I thought that it was great to be able to record 650MB (no 700MB disc?s yet) in about 30 minutes and have a reliable backup solution.  Mainly I have used my CD-RW drives over the years to do backup tasks and make audio CD?s.  But currently I have about 80GB of data that to me is critical.  Technically I could lose about half of that and the only thing it would do is waste a whole lot of time while I ripped CD?s getting it back.  But the other half is largely stuff that is irreplaceable. 

If you have ever backed up that much data on a 700MB CD?s, you know that even with the fastest drives it would take a long time.  The hard drives have gotten larger and larger but the CD?s are still 700MB?s each.  Enter the DVD writers ? capable of writing up to 4.7GB of data onto a single DVD.  This is a lot more, about 6 and a half times that of a 700MB CD.  However, to backup 80GB of data you would need about 20 DVD?s, maybe a few more depending on how you organize the data on them.  Better than 115 CD?s though, that?s for sure.  DVD burners have been around for a while, but they are starting to pickup speed and are being released from more than just one or two manufacturers.  The advances in DVD recording technology will hopefully progress as quickly as the CD recording technology did.  The speed is already pretty close, I would like to see things like double-sided, double layered media (not DVD-RAM though) and I hope that the new blue laser technology and the promise of even more densely packed data comes along quickly as well.  But for now, we have drives that can record a lot of data to a single DVD, and today we are looking at one of those drives ? the Plextor PX-504A.


The Package:

 

The Box

 

Accessories

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