Dan Butler's
TNPC Newsletter

CD-Writers Revisited

by Dan Butler

After all the excitement here in the TNPC offices over CD-ROM rewritable drives I broke down and purchased one. Since I'd missed the rebate on the Acer drive we recommended in TNPC #2.20 I settled on the ZipCD from Iomega. This drive is 4x-4x-24x and uses an available IDE connection in your computer.

The box came with everything I needed including a two-connection IDE cable, power cable Y-connector, and all the necessary software. Little things like a power cable Y-connector are important to me since a quick trip to the computer store is a one and one half hour round trip! The Iomega installation software was a multimedia application complete with Jazz music and voice instructions on how to proceed. All in all it took about 10 minutes to get the hardware installed and was almost painless.

I say almost because I had to switch my regular Zip drive from the secondary IDE chain to my primary IDE chain. This shifted my drive letters and Windows refused to start! After considering my options I booted into Safe Mode and used the Partition Magic Drivemapper utility to match my drive letters with the new configuration. That took another 10 minutes. A quick reboot (is there such a thing in Windows?) and everything was back to normal.
Partition Magic on Amazon for $59.99
http://www.thenakedpc.com/t/224/tr.cgi?pma
Partition Magic on Beyond for $62.99
http://www.thenakedpc.com/t/224/tr.cgi?pmb

In The Unofficial Guide to PCs we recommend setting your CD- ROM drive letter to Z:. Keeping with this train of thought I set the ZipCD to drive letter Y:, keeping my old CD-ROM drive as Z:. To change the drive letter of your CD-ROM go to Control Panel and open Device Manager. Locate your CD-ROM drive, choose Properties, then change to the Setup tab. Pages 146-147 of The Unofficial Guide to PC's contain the full instructions with screen shots.

The package was rounded out with a nice selection of software: Adobe Photoshop Limited Edition, Iomega Quick Sync, Adaptec Easy CD Creator(tm), Adaptec DirectCD(tm), and Avery Media Software for creating and printing CD labels, jewel case inserts, and more.

The only thing I wish Iomega had included was a CD-RW (rewritable) disk. Two CD-R disks were included but the space on those goes fast when you're backing up. If you buy the drive be sure to pick up some CD-RW disks while you're at it.

The list price for this drive on Amazon.com is $209.99. Iomega is running a $30 rebate bringing the actual price down to $179.99. The rebate isn't mentioned on Amazon but you can visit the link below for full details. Overall I'm very pleased with the drive and what I received. If you're still looking for a rewritable drive give the Iomega ZipCD a look. The information on the drive is very sparse at Amazon so use the Iomega site for more details.

Info on the Iomega ZipCD:
http://www.thenakedpc.com/t/224/tr.cgi?iomega

Iomega ZipCD rebate information:
http://www.thenakedpc.com/t/224/tr.cgi?zipcdrebate

Purchase the Iomega ZipCD from Amazon.com:
http://www.thenakedpc.com/t/224/tr.cgi?amazon1

10 CD-R/RW disks (5-CD-RW and 5 CD-R):
http://www.thenakedpc.com/t/224/tr.cgi?amazon2

The Unofficial Guide to PCs:
http://www.thenakedpc.com/t/224/tr.cgi?tugpcs2

Acer CD Writer Review in TNPC #2.20
http://www.thenakedpc.com/t/224/tr.cgi?acer1