[ale] Cendyne external USB cd-rw

[Jeff Rose]

On Mon, 2003-11-03 at 07:58, Geoffrey wrote:
> Jeff Rose wrote:
> > Yeah, I read that they are out of business, but I went ahead and bought
> > the drive.  Works fine so far.  I burned a couple o' coasters until I
> > figured out that you have to set speed=1 with cdrecord.  It still burned
> > ~700 mb in about 10 mins though.  So I'm guessing the speed is relative
> > to the max of the drive because 1X would have take a LONG time.
> 
> No, speed=1 is speed=1 on any drive.  If you can't burn at a higher 
> speed, then either the media is lousy, the hardware is lousy or a bit of 
> both.  I personally wouldn't have a burner that would require me to burn 
> at 1x.

Well, I burned another at 2x and it took about the same time.  Actually
slightly longer.  I used the driveropts=burnfree switch.  Upon finishing
cdrecord reported that burnfree had to be used 92 times.  At 1x it
didn't have to be used.  
> 
> Could it be a limitation of the interface? (usb)

Not sure what is going on but 10-12 minutes to burn a cd is fine with me
for $29.  Considering that I bought the HP for $260 about 3+ years ago,
if this one lasts a year and gives me anywhere near the number of burns,
it will have been worth it.  Besides I am weening myself from CD's as an
archive method.  I'm not convinced of their longevity.  At least not
CD-R.  I have several that are unreadable already.  Which brings up a
question.  What would be a better long term archive format?  Removable
drives?  I want something that will allow easy access to my data for
many, many years.