).
For the purposes of this review, we rate only those optical drives that have a 5-1/4-inch form factor. For details about the performance and cost on alternative devices, refer to the table "The Tale of the Tape" (in the article
"3-1/2-Inch Removable Media"
).
Drives using optical media are attractive because they have an incredibly long shelf life (estimated at 30 years). Sony says that its two optical drives -- the CMO-R53
1 and the CMO-R544 -- use 5-1/4-inch disks that will last for 100 years. Some vendors, including Pinnacle Micro, are touting optical disks as replacements for traditional magnetic disks, but don't expect many systems vendors to jump at the technology; the drives are still too slow. The Plasmon Data RF7030e is the most expensive 5-1/4-inch drive we tested at $3100; the average price of the 12 5-1/4-inch drives is $2285.
With its low price of $649 and support for a standard quad-speed CD-ROM, Panasonic's PD/CD-ROM LF-1000AB, a dual-purpose, phase-change optical drive, might be better suited for mass-market storage solutions. The phase-change cartridge, which holds over 600 MB of data, is rewritable a half million times. Phase-change media offer a reliable means of data storage, as they aren't affected by magnetic fields. This technology will let drives like Panasonic's support the emerging high-density digital videodisc (DVD) CD-ROM format for the entertainment industry.
Iomega and SyQuest build c
ompact 3-1/2-inch devices using Winchester-type magnetic media that can hold up to 1 GB of data. Iomega's Jaz SCSI drive ($599) is a breakthrough product that uses a 1-GB medium that isn't much wider than a 1.4-MB floppy drive and only about twice as thick. SyQuest's EZ135 is another small-media drive that holds 135 MB of data. Olympus's PowerMO 230, using MO media, offers a 230-MB capacity. These smallish disks are ideal for taking storage-hungry image, sound, and video multimedia files on the road. The average price of these small drives is $310.
HOW TO USE THIS GUIDE
We selected the best removable-media drives by evaluating performance (sequential throughput rates and read/write speeds) as well as features and usability characteristics.
Price:
The 5-1/4-inch optical drives that we tested range in price from $649 to $3100, with an average price of $2285. The 3-1/2-inch drives are relatively inexpensive at between $200
and $599, but they only have a fraction of the storage capacity of the larger drives.
Capacity (GB):
The 5-1/4-inch optical drives have 1.3- and 2.6-GB storage media (except for Panasonic's PD drive). The smaller 3-1/2-inch drives are more eclectic, with 100-MB, 135-MB, 230-MB, and 1-GB cartridges.
Average Seek Time (MS):
The vendor-provided time, in milliseconds.
Asynchronous Burst-Transfer Rate (MBps):
The latest optical drives, like Pinnacle Micro's Apex 2.6GB 5-1/4-inch unit, support a speedy 6-MBps maximum burst-transfer rate that moves data faster than ever before. It appears that optical drives aren't as slothlike as many users perceive and may someday replace the magnetic hard drive on the desktop.
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16 Drives for Fast Data Backup
