Serious Burn: Copying CDs In Just 3 Minutes

Yamaha CRW 2100E

The Yamaha 2100E is a 16x/10x/40x burner and costs $ 110.

The Yamaha 2100E package.

The Yamaha CRW 2100E's features make it a mid-range burner: it can write to CD-R media at a maximum speed of 16x, although its read speed can go as high as 40x. Like all of the other test participants, the CDR 2100E writes to CD-RW disks at a maximum speed of 10x. Recording an oversized CD image took exactly 5 minutes and 51 seconds, while the copy of the 506 MB CD-ROM took 4 minutes and 7 seconds. The rather low transfer rate shown by the Yamaha deserves criticism. The data transfer rate of only 3661 kB/s (24.41x) does not exactly let this renowned company bask in glory. The AOpen CRW 1232A, working at a 32x read speed, almost reaches the same transfer rate (3537 kB/s)!

Unlike its counterpart, the CRW 2200E, the Yamaha CRW 2100E is not equipped with the burn proofing function. The device's access times turn out to be quite fast, although full seek access was completed in 238 ms in the test. The 8 MB storage cache of the Yamaha prevents sudden interruptions in the write process, especially as the device does not have burn proofing. Audio CDs are read with the maximum speed possible of about 6,000 kB/s, allowing MP3 files to be recorded very quickly.

The package includes the NERO Burning ROM 5.5 software and two discs (CD-R and CD-RW).

Overall, at just over $ 100, the "little" Yamaha 2100E is a better choice than the larger CRW 2200E model with a maximum burn speed of 20x, which costs $ 79 more.

Complete package of the Yamaha 2100E.

As with the larger CRW 2200E model, the data transfer rate drops off significantly in the outer range of the test CD. But after a short time, it increases somewhat.