Zip CD

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A Techtite Review

With all of the choices in recordable CD (CD-R, CD-RW) drives these days, it's getting harder to decide which one to buy. With varied prices, you don't know if you should go for the most affordable drive (at reduced performance?) or for the allegedly "best," most expensive one (is the price merely inflated?) Iomega --the designers of the well-known, affordable Zip Disk Drive series-- have released the "Zip CD"; their affordable answer to CD-R/RW drives everywhere. So far, I'm very pleased with the purchase; it's the most versatile and easy to use CD-R drive I've ever owned.

The box includes more than you'll ever need to install the internal drive. The drive even comes with two "split" cables; one in case you don't have any remaining internal power supply cables (allowing you to split one of your internal power plugs into two). A second cable, in case you don't already have one, splits your standard IDE cable into two, for two separate drives (this might also be good for connecting the drive to your motherboard's secondary IDE socket, if you lost the original cable).

In addition are two CD-Recordable discs to get you started, Adobe Photoshop LE software, Avery Label printing software (for printing your own, custom CD labels!), and of course the disk of drivers/utilities to use the unit itself. Such utilities are very versatile, and by the time you insert any blank disc into the unit, filling the disc with data is as simple as point-and click. A menu automatically appears, allowing you to make the blank CD-R disc into an audio CD, a specialty data CD, a "universal" data CD (compatible with older PCs), and so on. If you wish to know technical specs, the drive's speeds are 32x read, 8x write, 4x rewrite, with a 125-millisecond access time. Considering the price of the drive, burning even the largest of CDs takes very little time, and the end result is perfect.

I've already used the ZIP CD to backup all of my archived resources for Techtite.com, and the procedure was smooth as silk. I was also able to create additional backup discs of all of my most favorite downloads from the internet, and another CD to backup downloaded driver updates for all my PC hardware. The possibilities are truly endless. While Zip disks are slowly becoming the norm in rewritable media storage, PC owners might also want to give the ZIP CD a look. After all, it allows you to permanently store data on a CD-R disc, as well as re-write data on a CD-RW disc. In short, it's one of the most affordable, best tools of anyone who's avidly on the internet...

	Final Rating : Deep Impact. One of the easiest ways to make your own data CDs ever created!
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