Burn that thang! AOpen 12speed CD Writer

Software, Continued

Norton Ghost 5.1 should be known from some of our motherboard reviews. It's not only included with the AOpen CD writer, but also with several motherboards from different companies.

Use Ghost to make exact backups of partitions or whole hard drives. They can either be used for quick hard drive duplication or as a complete system backup.

Summary

The price for AOpen's CRW-1232 should be well below $250. According to pricewatch.com there is also one company selling it for $189, which we could not verify so far. Yet approximately $ 210-230 is okay for a timely product - the drives from Plextor and Teac are usually more expensive.

Technically AOpen's new 12x CD-recorder is a good product. Its 4 MB write buffer is standard to ensure a safe write process at 12x-speed. The bundled recording software 'Nero 5' is one of the best. The drive supports all common formats and both read performance as well as operating noise are good. The drive does not produce an annoying noise level even when reading at 32x-speed. The drive was almost free of vibrations at this speed.

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Patrick Schmid
Editor-in-Chief (2005-2006)

Patrick Schmid was the editor-in-chief for Tom's Hardware from 2005 to 2006. He wrote numerous articles on a wide range of hardware topics, including storage, CPUs, and system builds.