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NEC 3500 or Pioneer 108 in external firewire enclosure?

PostPosted: Fri Aug 27, 2004 11:53 am
by kling
I have asked this before but did not get an answer yet. Sorry to keep harping on this. Am considering an upgrade to my trusted Pioneer 106 which resides in an external firewire/usb2 enclosure. Will the firewire be able to handle the 16x of the NEC or Pioneer? More important: has somebody had some hands on experience with any of these drives in an external enclosure? I would really appreciate some feedback. Thanks in advance

PostPosted: Fri Aug 27, 2004 12:26 pm
by cfitz
Here is a post with some measurements of transfer rates to and from an external enclosure using various interfaces. The device inside the enclosure was a hard drive rather than a DVD drive, but you can still see that FireWire is capable of supporting the ~21 MB/sec transfer rate needed for 16x recording.

Whether or not your system as whole is capable of 16x burning through an external enclosure is another question. That would depend on the particular enclosure, interface cards, etc. you use. It safe to say, though, that you will have a greater chance of success with FireWire than USB 2.0.

cfitz

PostPosted: Fri Aug 27, 2004 2:46 pm
by kling
Thanks cfitz for your helpful mail. The external enclosure has an Oxford 911 chip set... my system runs a P4 2.4 Ghz with 512 MB and 120 GB WD 8MB HDD - do you think that will be sufficient to sustain a 16x burner?

Have you had any experience with the Pioneer 108 or the NEC 3500? Which one would you recommend?

thanks again

PostPosted: Fri Aug 27, 2004 6:48 pm
by articulate
I have a Teac 540E in a USB/Firewire enclosure...with USB 2.0 the drive burns at full speed, with Firewire it won't burn faster than 32x....

PostPosted: Sat Aug 28, 2004 12:22 pm
by cfitz
I have no recommendation between the 108 and the 3500, but your system ought to be able to keep up with 16x burning.

cfitz