Pacific Digital Mach 48 CD-RW Burner
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- Enclosure Type: Internal
- Read Speed: 48x (CD)
- ReWrite Speed: 12x (CD-RW)
- Write Speed: 48x (CD)
- Burner Type: CD-RW
- Platform: PC
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The Pacific Digital Mach 48 CD Writer (LiteOn 48125W) - State of the Art Burning
Pros
Excellent value, Mt. Rainier works well, easy to install/use, Nero 5.5, FAST
Cons
Almost no documentation, not quiet
Recommended it?
Yes
The Bottom Line:
The "Mach 48" 48X CD writer can burn a cd in 3 minutes, and with Mt. Rainier and 12X CDRW speeds, packet writing becomes much more useful.
The Pacific Digital Mach 48 is an internal IDE CDR/RW drive, 48X Write, 12X Rewrite, 48X Read, for the PC. The Mach 48 is Pacific Digital's "state of the art" CD Writer (they also sell 32X and 40X internal cd writers and 16X and 24X external cd writers), and is actually manufactured by LiteOn, one of the leading manufacturers of CD writers. The Pacific Digital Mach 48 is a rebadged LiteOn 48125W, and you will likely find this drive also sold under several other brand names. In addition to 48X maximum read and write speed, this drive features
- Smart Burn buffer underrun technology
- Nero 5.5 CD authoring software
- CAV Write technology
- InCD Packet Writing software with Mt. Rainier support
(Drag and Drop files to your cd writer)
The Mach 48, is not just an evolutionary, slightly faster, drive than the previous generation of 40X cd writers. The Mach 48 is one of the first drives to offer Mt. Ranier UDF support, and also use CAV writing. Increasing the maximum write speed to 48X and using CAV writing technology only provides a modest improvement over the previous generation of cd writers, but Mt Rainier packet writing is a major improvement, and if you save much data to cd's using packet writing software, you will want to seriously consider upgrading to a Mt. Rainier capable cd writer.
Mt. Rainier is a user friendly extension of the UDF packet writing technology, typically available using software like DirectCD and InCD. UDF software requires CDRW's to be formated to meet the UDF 1.5 standard, which then allows you to save files to CDRW as if it were another hard disk or floppy drive. But, UDF formatting of a CDRW typically takes 20-60 minutes. A CD writer/software combination that takes advantage of the Mt. Rainier standard allows you "start" formatting a cdrw, and in about 30 seconds, you can start saving files to the CDRW. The cdwriter then continues to format the disk in the background, with minimal impact on system performance. You can remove the CDRW at anytime, even though this background format process may be still going on. More information on Mt. Rainier UDF writing can be found here: http://www.mt-rainier.org .
Most CD readers and writers have used CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) reading technology, but previous generations of high speed cd writers have used Z-CLV (Zone Constant Linear Velocity) write technology This means a typical 40X cd writer, which starts burning a cd from the inside out, initially starts burning at 20X speed, then steps up speed in 4 or 5 increments, 24, 28, 32, and finally 40X writing, and require about 3 minutes and 40 seconds to burn a full 700 mb cd. The MACH 48 increases writing speed steadily from 20X to 48X at the end of a cd, by holding the cdrom rotational speed constant. The Mach 48 required slightly over 3 minutes in my tests (including spin up time and time required to finalize a cd) to burn a full 700 mb cd with Nero.
In the box you'll find the Mach 48, one blank CDR, a Nero 5.5 softare CD, IDE cable, audio cable, mounting screws, a single 8 1/2" X 11" page set of installation instructions by Pacific Digital, and a 11" X 17" page of installation instructions by LiteOn, in ten languages. Everything needed to install and use the drive is there, although the installation instructions are very short.
Installation
Installation went smoothly for me. The key steps were:
- Set the Master/Slave jumper on the back of the drive (you can attach two IDE drives to each IDE channel on your system, one is the Master, and one must be set as the slave. Pacific Digital recommends the Mach 48 be installed as the Master on your second IDE channel.
- Install the drive in your case
- Plug in the IDE cable
- Attach the audio cable to your sound card (allows you to play back music cd's through the speakers attached to your sound card)
- Install Nero and InCD. The version of InCD included with the Mach48 was 3.27, after installing it, I downloaded the latest version, 3.31, from the Nero website, www.ahead.de . I also updated Nero from the included version 5.5.8 to 5.5.9. Version 5.5.9 includes a new, attractive front end to Nero, called Nero Express, which walks users through creation of different types of cd's (music, data, SVCD's, etc) in an easy to follow, step by step manner.
-Finally, I also downloaded the latest firmware update (VS06) for this drive from the PacificDigital website www.pacificdigital.com .
The installation manual recommends using a 800 mhz processor to burn at 48X speed, but so far I have not encountered any problems with my 750 mhz Athlon system running Windows ME with 256K ram.
I encountered no problems with the installation process, which only took about 30 minutes.
Software
The Mach 48 comes with the full version of Nero Burning Rom CD authoring softare. Since I have reviewed Nero separately http://www.epinions.com/content_66308640388, I won't go into much detail. With Nero, you can burn data cd's, VCD's and SVCD's, audio cd's, and burn several disk image files formats, including bin/cue files. Nero will convert mp3 and wma files to wave files transparently when burning audio cd's. Likewise, Nero will convert avi files to VCD compliant mpg files for VCD's, although this can take a long time (hours). Although Nero can create SVCD's from MPEG2 video files, Nero does not include the necessary codec's to make SVCD compliant mpg2 files from AVI or other types of video files. (This capability is available for $16 as a "download" plugin for Nero from the website.) Nero also only includes the capability to encode 30 mp3 files, with unlimited encodes available via a $15 MP3 upgrade at the Nero website. The most recent version of Nero, 5.5.9, is a available from the Nero website, and includes a new front end, Nero Express, to walk users through the cd creation process. New and casuals users of Nero will appreciate Nero Express, while experienced users will still be able to access the menu driven Explorer-like interface of Nero. The Mach 48 also includes InCD, Mt. Rainier capable packet writing software which allows you to treat CDRW's (but not CDR's) as a large floppy disk.
CD Burning
Burning Data CD's with Nero
As you might expect, this drive is fast. Some typical burn times using Nero are listed below. The times listed are measured from when I push the "start" button, until Nero has finished burning the lead out track and ejected the CD. This doesn't give you a picture of raw burning speed, but it does give a good picture of real world performance, as most writers take 5-10 seconds to start the burn process and another 15-20 seconds write the lead in/lead out tracks to the cd. Nero reports the spin up time (time required to accelerate to top speed) for this drive to be 3.5 seconds, and spindown time is 4 seconds.
CD Type................File(s) size........Burn time
SVCD.........................791mb.............2 min 45 seconds (~4900 kb/second)
Data CD, closed.........698mb.............3 min 13 seconds (~3700 kb/second)
Data CD, left open......675mb.............3 min 5 seconds (~3700 kb/second)
Data CD, left open......352mb.............2 min 11 seconds (2750 kb/second)
Data CD......................269mb addit'l....1 min 14 seconds (3700 kb/second)
(note that data is written to faster to the 2nd half of the cd)
For comparison, burning a 800 mb SVCD on a LiteOn 24X cd burner takes only about 1 minute additional time. Although the 48X writer ultimately reaches 48X write speeds, for the first half of the data burning process it is burning at 24X to about 32X speeds, not much faster than the 24X operates for the same first half of the burning process.
I have been using 32X rated Imation CDR's, and have been successfully burning at 48X speeds. However, some users have reported problems burning some brands 24X and 32X CDR's, and have had to drop back to 32X maximum speeds. As 48X rated CDR's become available, this problem should go away.
Burning Data CD's with InCD (Packet Writing under Mt. Rainier)
"Drag and drop" saving to CDRW's is made possible through the use of "packet writing" software, which must be running in the background of any computer that you will use to read or write to UDF CDRW's. If you want to save small amounts of data to a CDRW at several different times, packet writing is the most efficient method. Alternatively, you can use Nero to add data to a CDR or CDRW in several sessions, but each session results in the loss of ~13mb of disk space. The Universal Disk Format (UDF) standard provides for files to be added to a CD-RW disc a file at a time, in 32kb "packets". The UDF standard also allows for random deletion of files. Most packet writing software, including the version of InCD which comes with the Mach 48, conforms to the UDF (Universal Disk Format) 1.5 standard. (Direct CD, the packetwriting software that comes with Easy CD Creator is also UDF 1.5 compliant.)
The latest versions of InCD implement an improvement to the UDF 1.5 standard called Mt. Rainier, which is supported by only a few of the latest generation of cd writers. Previous versions of InCD, used in conjunction with older cd writers, required 20 - 60 minutes to format a CDRW before you could drag and drop files to your cd writer as if it were another hard drive. Mt. Rainier technology has almost completely taking the formating time out of the picture, allowing you to initially format a CDRW in about 30 seconds, before you can start to save data to the cd. Drag and drop saving now goes like this:
- Insert the CDRW disk into the CD Writer
- InCD recognizes the blank CDRW disk and you choose to format the CDRW, with the Mt. Rainier option turned on.
- 15-20 seconds later InCD says "You can now use this cdrw as a large floppy disk".
Formatting a 650 mb CDRW with InCD, leaves about 509mb of space available for data, and leaves about 539mb space on a 700mb CDRW. About 80mb of the "lost" space is taken up by the installation routine for a Mt. Rainier UDF reader. If you try to read one of your UDF cd's on a computer without UDF software, you would not be able to read it initially, but the UDF installer would launch, allowing you to install a UDF reader (called EasyWrite), ensuring you will be able to read your CDRW on any computer. THe EasyWrite UDF/Mt Rainier reading software is also available at the Nero website.
Using 10X rated CDRW disks, I tested drag and drop saving.
CD Type.......Data size....................Burn time
10X CDRW........350 mb...................5 min 13 seconds (~1100 kb/second)
10X CDRW........160 mb additional...2 min 20 seconds(~1100 kb/second)
10X CDRW........510 mb....................7 min 35 seconds(~1100 kb/second)
Unlike writing to CDR's, writing data to the slower CDRW's occurs at a constant rate over the complete cd, being limited by the capabilities of the media, and not the velocity at which the cd writer can rotate. Deleting files only takes a second. InCD only works with CDRW's, not CDR's. When you eject a UDF CDRW from your cd writer, it will take a few second for the writer to prepare the cd prior to opening the door. I also noticed that if you try to reformat a cd while the background format process was going on, you could no longer access the cd until the background format was complete (which usually takes 10-20 minutes).
Writing to CDRW's with Nero
Using 10X rated generic cdrw's, I asked Nero to burn 667 mb of data to the cd. Nero recognized the cdrw's 10X rating, and did not give an option to burn at higher than 10X speeds. Total burn time, including startup and writing the lead out tracks took 8 minutes and 30 seconds (1340 kilobytes per second, or ~9X, pretty much what you would expect). Write speeds to CDRW's using Nero are about the same as saving files to a UDF formatted CDRW using InCD.
Read Performance
The Mach 48 also provides excellent read performance, on par with, but no faster than, the fastest drives available. As with cd writing, the Mach 48 rotates the CDROM at a fixed speed, which results in increasing read speeds as you move from the inside to the outside of the CD. CD Speed, a CDROM evaluation program which is now included with Nero, reported the average read speed for several 74 minute cdroms to be ~36X, with reading speeds typically starting at 20X at the inside edge of a cd, and reaching 48X at the outer edge.
Digital Audio Extraction is also fast and accurate. For example, using Nero, I was able to extract 15 wav files (741mb) from the cd Head East - Concert Classics, totaling 74 minutes of music, in 2 minutes 17 seconds, an averate rate of over 5500kb/sec. CD DAE, a free cd ripping program, which also offers an option to verify extracted files, was used to test DAE performance, showing similar speeds and 0 (zero) errors in the extracted files. CD Speed and CD DAE are available as free downloads at www.cdspeed2000.com.
The Mach 48 is not the quietest drive available. The Mach 48 is fast because it rotates at 10,000 rpm, faster than most hard drives, but this also results in a barely acceptable, very noticeable, whirring sound at top speed. Typically the drive only runs at top speeds when writing, extracting audio, or if you are copying a lot of data from a cd. The drive runs quitely playing music cd's, and when playing most games. If you want the drive to run more softly for a given application, another tool is included with Nero, called DriveSpeed, which you can use to limit the top speed of the cdwriter, allowing it to run a little more softly. If this is the only CDROM in your system, you may want to take advantage of DriveSpeed to slow down and soften the sounds from this drive.
Support
The installation instructions included with the Mach 48 are printed on one sheet of paper, and are barely adequate. An inexperienced upgrader would feel uncomfortable installing this drive with only these instructions. If you have installed a hard drive or cdrom before, you should have no problems. A hard copy manual for Nero is not included, but pdf versions of the excellent 34 page quickstart guide and 120 page Nero user manual is included on the cd. Each provides clear pictures and detailed information to allow users to take full advantage of this highly regarded cd authoring program. The Pacific Digital website offers live online support 8AM-5PM PST, email support, a few FAQ's, software upgrades, and links to the LiteOn website for firmware upgrades.
WOULD I BUY IT AGAIN?
Yes. If you are upgrading from a 24X or faster CD writer, the Mach 48 will provide only incremental improvements in cd authoring speed. However, if you use packet writing software, this drive provides a dramatic improvement in the time required to format and use CDRW's. If you are buying a new cd writer, models with Mt. Rainier should be at the top of your list. Pacific Digital is not a well known name, but this drive is manufactured by LiteOn, and is a high quality cd writer. LiteOn has already provided firmware upgrades to this model to support additional types of blank cd's, and in the past LiteOn has provided firmware updates to other drives as needed to optimize their performance. LiteOn drives have had a good reputation, offering an excellent combination of performance, reliability, and features. Pacific Digital branded drives are also affordable (this model cost $80 after a $20 rebate). Complete versions of Nero and InCD are included, and Nero might be the best cd authoring program available. If you can get past the lack of documentation, this drive is a very good choice.
Manufacturer websites:
Pacific Digital
www.pacificdigital.com
Nero/InCD
www.ahead.de
LiteOn
www.liteonit.com
Mt. Rainier
www.mt-rainier.org
Related reviews
Cendyne/LiteOn 24X cd writer
http://www.epinions.com/content_60692991620
Nero 5.5
http://www.epinions.com/content_66308640388
Easy CD Creator Platinum
http://www.epinions.com/content_34642562692
NTI CD Maker 2000 Professional
http://www.epinions.com/content_68287303300
- Smart Burn buffer underrun technology
- Nero 5.5 CD authoring software
- CAV Write technology
- InCD Packet Writing software with Mt. Rainier support
(Drag and Drop files to your cd writer)
The Mach 48, is not just an evolutionary, slightly faster, drive than the previous generation of 40X cd writers. The Mach 48 is one of the first drives to offer Mt. Ranier UDF support, and also use CAV writing. Increasing the maximum write speed to 48X and using CAV writing technology only provides a modest improvement over the previous generation of cd writers, but Mt Rainier packet writing is a major improvement, and if you save much data to cd's using packet writing software, you will want to seriously consider upgrading to a Mt. Rainier capable cd writer.
Mt. Rainier is a user friendly extension of the UDF packet writing technology, typically available using software like DirectCD and InCD. UDF software requires CDRW's to be formated to meet the UDF 1.5 standard, which then allows you to save files to CDRW as if it were another hard disk or floppy drive. But, UDF formatting of a CDRW typically takes 20-60 minutes. A CD writer/software combination that takes advantage of the Mt. Rainier standard allows you "start" formatting a cdrw, and in about 30 seconds, you can start saving files to the CDRW. The cdwriter then continues to format the disk in the background, with minimal impact on system performance. You can remove the CDRW at anytime, even though this background format process may be still going on. More information on Mt. Rainier UDF writing can be found here: http://www.mt-rainier.org .
Most CD readers and writers have used CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) reading technology, but previous generations of high speed cd writers have used Z-CLV (Zone Constant Linear Velocity) write technology This means a typical 40X cd writer, which starts burning a cd from the inside out, initially starts burning at 20X speed, then steps up speed in 4 or 5 increments, 24, 28, 32, and finally 40X writing, and require about 3 minutes and 40 seconds to burn a full 700 mb cd. The MACH 48 increases writing speed steadily from 20X to 48X at the end of a cd, by holding the cdrom rotational speed constant. The Mach 48 required slightly over 3 minutes in my tests (including spin up time and time required to finalize a cd) to burn a full 700 mb cd with Nero.
In the box you'll find the Mach 48, one blank CDR, a Nero 5.5 softare CD, IDE cable, audio cable, mounting screws, a single 8 1/2" X 11" page set of installation instructions by Pacific Digital, and a 11" X 17" page of installation instructions by LiteOn, in ten languages. Everything needed to install and use the drive is there, although the installation instructions are very short.
Installation
Installation went smoothly for me. The key steps were:
- Set the Master/Slave jumper on the back of the drive (you can attach two IDE drives to each IDE channel on your system, one is the Master, and one must be set as the slave. Pacific Digital recommends the Mach 48 be installed as the Master on your second IDE channel.
- Install the drive in your case
- Plug in the IDE cable
- Attach the audio cable to your sound card (allows you to play back music cd's through the speakers attached to your sound card)
- Install Nero and InCD. The version of InCD included with the Mach48 was 3.27, after installing it, I downloaded the latest version, 3.31, from the Nero website, www.ahead.de . I also updated Nero from the included version 5.5.8 to 5.5.9. Version 5.5.9 includes a new, attractive front end to Nero, called Nero Express, which walks users through creation of different types of cd's (music, data, SVCD's, etc) in an easy to follow, step by step manner.
-Finally, I also downloaded the latest firmware update (VS06) for this drive from the PacificDigital website www.pacificdigital.com .
The installation manual recommends using a 800 mhz processor to burn at 48X speed, but so far I have not encountered any problems with my 750 mhz Athlon system running Windows ME with 256K ram.
I encountered no problems with the installation process, which only took about 30 minutes.
Software
The Mach 48 comes with the full version of Nero Burning Rom CD authoring softare. Since I have reviewed Nero separately http://www.epinions.com/content_66308640388, I won't go into much detail. With Nero, you can burn data cd's, VCD's and SVCD's, audio cd's, and burn several disk image files formats, including bin/cue files. Nero will convert mp3 and wma files to wave files transparently when burning audio cd's. Likewise, Nero will convert avi files to VCD compliant mpg files for VCD's, although this can take a long time (hours). Although Nero can create SVCD's from MPEG2 video files, Nero does not include the necessary codec's to make SVCD compliant mpg2 files from AVI or other types of video files. (This capability is available for $16 as a "download" plugin for Nero from the website.) Nero also only includes the capability to encode 30 mp3 files, with unlimited encodes available via a $15 MP3 upgrade at the Nero website. The most recent version of Nero, 5.5.9, is a available from the Nero website, and includes a new front end, Nero Express, to walk users through the cd creation process. New and casuals users of Nero will appreciate Nero Express, while experienced users will still be able to access the menu driven Explorer-like interface of Nero. The Mach 48 also includes InCD, Mt. Rainier capable packet writing software which allows you to treat CDRW's (but not CDR's) as a large floppy disk.
CD Burning
Burning Data CD's with Nero
As you might expect, this drive is fast. Some typical burn times using Nero are listed below. The times listed are measured from when I push the "start" button, until Nero has finished burning the lead out track and ejected the CD. This doesn't give you a picture of raw burning speed, but it does give a good picture of real world performance, as most writers take 5-10 seconds to start the burn process and another 15-20 seconds write the lead in/lead out tracks to the cd. Nero reports the spin up time (time required to accelerate to top speed) for this drive to be 3.5 seconds, and spindown time is 4 seconds.
CD Type................File(s) size........Burn time
SVCD.........................791mb.............2 min 45 seconds (~4900 kb/second)
Data CD, closed.........698mb.............3 min 13 seconds (~3700 kb/second)
Data CD, left open......675mb.............3 min 5 seconds (~3700 kb/second)
Data CD, left open......352mb.............2 min 11 seconds (2750 kb/second)
Data CD......................269mb addit'l....1 min 14 seconds (3700 kb/second)
(note that data is written to faster to the 2nd half of the cd)
For comparison, burning a 800 mb SVCD on a LiteOn 24X cd burner takes only about 1 minute additional time. Although the 48X writer ultimately reaches 48X write speeds, for the first half of the data burning process it is burning at 24X to about 32X speeds, not much faster than the 24X operates for the same first half of the burning process.
I have been using 32X rated Imation CDR's, and have been successfully burning at 48X speeds. However, some users have reported problems burning some brands 24X and 32X CDR's, and have had to drop back to 32X maximum speeds. As 48X rated CDR's become available, this problem should go away.
Burning Data CD's with InCD (Packet Writing under Mt. Rainier)
"Drag and drop" saving to CDRW's is made possible through the use of "packet writing" software, which must be running in the background of any computer that you will use to read or write to UDF CDRW's. If you want to save small amounts of data to a CDRW at several different times, packet writing is the most efficient method. Alternatively, you can use Nero to add data to a CDR or CDRW in several sessions, but each session results in the loss of ~13mb of disk space. The Universal Disk Format (UDF) standard provides for files to be added to a CD-RW disc a file at a time, in 32kb "packets". The UDF standard also allows for random deletion of files. Most packet writing software, including the version of InCD which comes with the Mach 48, conforms to the UDF (Universal Disk Format) 1.5 standard. (Direct CD, the packetwriting software that comes with Easy CD Creator is also UDF 1.5 compliant.)
The latest versions of InCD implement an improvement to the UDF 1.5 standard called Mt. Rainier, which is supported by only a few of the latest generation of cd writers. Previous versions of InCD, used in conjunction with older cd writers, required 20 - 60 minutes to format a CDRW before you could drag and drop files to your cd writer as if it were another hard drive. Mt. Rainier technology has almost completely taking the formating time out of the picture, allowing you to initially format a CDRW in about 30 seconds, before you can start to save data to the cd. Drag and drop saving now goes like this:
- Insert the CDRW disk into the CD Writer
- InCD recognizes the blank CDRW disk and you choose to format the CDRW, with the Mt. Rainier option turned on.
- 15-20 seconds later InCD says "You can now use this cdrw as a large floppy disk".
Formatting a 650 mb CDRW with InCD, leaves about 509mb of space available for data, and leaves about 539mb space on a 700mb CDRW. About 80mb of the "lost" space is taken up by the installation routine for a Mt. Rainier UDF reader. If you try to read one of your UDF cd's on a computer without UDF software, you would not be able to read it initially, but the UDF installer would launch, allowing you to install a UDF reader (called EasyWrite), ensuring you will be able to read your CDRW on any computer. THe EasyWrite UDF/Mt Rainier reading software is also available at the Nero website.
Using 10X rated CDRW disks, I tested drag and drop saving.
CD Type.......Data size....................Burn time
10X CDRW........350 mb...................5 min 13 seconds (~1100 kb/second)
10X CDRW........160 mb additional...2 min 20 seconds(~1100 kb/second)
10X CDRW........510 mb....................7 min 35 seconds(~1100 kb/second)
Unlike writing to CDR's, writing data to the slower CDRW's occurs at a constant rate over the complete cd, being limited by the capabilities of the media, and not the velocity at which the cd writer can rotate. Deleting files only takes a second. InCD only works with CDRW's, not CDR's. When you eject a UDF CDRW from your cd writer, it will take a few second for the writer to prepare the cd prior to opening the door. I also noticed that if you try to reformat a cd while the background format process was going on, you could no longer access the cd until the background format was complete (which usually takes 10-20 minutes).
Writing to CDRW's with Nero
Using 10X rated generic cdrw's, I asked Nero to burn 667 mb of data to the cd. Nero recognized the cdrw's 10X rating, and did not give an option to burn at higher than 10X speeds. Total burn time, including startup and writing the lead out tracks took 8 minutes and 30 seconds (1340 kilobytes per second, or ~9X, pretty much what you would expect). Write speeds to CDRW's using Nero are about the same as saving files to a UDF formatted CDRW using InCD.
Read Performance
The Mach 48 also provides excellent read performance, on par with, but no faster than, the fastest drives available. As with cd writing, the Mach 48 rotates the CDROM at a fixed speed, which results in increasing read speeds as you move from the inside to the outside of the CD. CD Speed, a CDROM evaluation program which is now included with Nero, reported the average read speed for several 74 minute cdroms to be ~36X, with reading speeds typically starting at 20X at the inside edge of a cd, and reaching 48X at the outer edge.
Digital Audio Extraction is also fast and accurate. For example, using Nero, I was able to extract 15 wav files (741mb) from the cd Head East - Concert Classics, totaling 74 minutes of music, in 2 minutes 17 seconds, an averate rate of over 5500kb/sec. CD DAE, a free cd ripping program, which also offers an option to verify extracted files, was used to test DAE performance, showing similar speeds and 0 (zero) errors in the extracted files. CD Speed and CD DAE are available as free downloads at www.cdspeed2000.com.
The Mach 48 is not the quietest drive available. The Mach 48 is fast because it rotates at 10,000 rpm, faster than most hard drives, but this also results in a barely acceptable, very noticeable, whirring sound at top speed. Typically the drive only runs at top speeds when writing, extracting audio, or if you are copying a lot of data from a cd. The drive runs quitely playing music cd's, and when playing most games. If you want the drive to run more softly for a given application, another tool is included with Nero, called DriveSpeed, which you can use to limit the top speed of the cdwriter, allowing it to run a little more softly. If this is the only CDROM in your system, you may want to take advantage of DriveSpeed to slow down and soften the sounds from this drive.
Support
The installation instructions included with the Mach 48 are printed on one sheet of paper, and are barely adequate. An inexperienced upgrader would feel uncomfortable installing this drive with only these instructions. If you have installed a hard drive or cdrom before, you should have no problems. A hard copy manual for Nero is not included, but pdf versions of the excellent 34 page quickstart guide and 120 page Nero user manual is included on the cd. Each provides clear pictures and detailed information to allow users to take full advantage of this highly regarded cd authoring program. The Pacific Digital website offers live online support 8AM-5PM PST, email support, a few FAQ's, software upgrades, and links to the LiteOn website for firmware upgrades.
WOULD I BUY IT AGAIN?
Yes. If you are upgrading from a 24X or faster CD writer, the Mach 48 will provide only incremental improvements in cd authoring speed. However, if you use packet writing software, this drive provides a dramatic improvement in the time required to format and use CDRW's. If you are buying a new cd writer, models with Mt. Rainier should be at the top of your list. Pacific Digital is not a well known name, but this drive is manufactured by LiteOn, and is a high quality cd writer. LiteOn has already provided firmware upgrades to this model to support additional types of blank cd's, and in the past LiteOn has provided firmware updates to other drives as needed to optimize their performance. LiteOn drives have had a good reputation, offering an excellent combination of performance, reliability, and features. Pacific Digital branded drives are also affordable (this model cost $80 after a $20 rebate). Complete versions of Nero and InCD are included, and Nero might be the best cd authoring program available. If you can get past the lack of documentation, this drive is a very good choice.
Manufacturer websites:
Pacific Digital
www.pacificdigital.com
Nero/InCD
www.ahead.de
LiteOn
www.liteonit.com
Mt. Rainier
www.mt-rainier.org
Related reviews
Cendyne/LiteOn 24X cd writer
http://www.epinions.com/content_60692991620
Nero 5.5
http://www.epinions.com/content_66308640388
Easy CD Creator Platinum
http://www.epinions.com/content_34642562692
NTI CD Maker 2000 Professional
http://www.epinions.com/content_68287303300
