Having a compact disc writer is a good idea though there are many alternatives available to record or keep data. The common efficient and easy ones of devices to keep data are a floppy disc and a compact disc (CD). These two devices might be common alternatives for us to keep our data. Which one is better?

First of all, let’s compare the price of a floppy disk with the price of a compact disc (CD). The prices of both devices almost figure out the same number. As the second consideration, the endurance of a CD to keep data is much better than the endurance of a floppy disc. And the last one, the data storage capacity of a CD is much higher than a floppy disc has. These comparisons have proved that using a CD gives more advantages.

Okay, though the first investment to have our data transferred onto a CD is more expensive (if it is being compared with investment on having a floppy drive and or the others), I am sure it is still advantageous. The price per megabyte of the data space of each device should be one of our main considerations.

It is an ATAPI Internal model CD RW drive with the following specifications: 20x10x40x. Personally I have used it for about 1 year, and I think it is a tough and nice one. This CD RW drive is packed with Nero Burning ROM 5.0, and it cost me about Rp 1,500,000 (about GBP 100) and todays’ price is about Rp 1,200,000 (about GBP 80).

Well, just an additional information, this Ricoh MP7200A - comes with a comprehensive manual and easy to understand, even for a beginner. Then as I have mentioned before, this CD drive is also accompanied with a burning utility, Nero 5.0 - and the manual of the Nero is a nice one, too.

I purchased this Ricoh because it offered a Just Link technology, a nice burning feature with a reachable price. What is it, then? Well, in case the data transfer cannot catch up during the writing process, the buffer under run errors will occur. This error has always been major concern for most CD RW drive users. Just Link is a new technology developed independently by Ricoh that automatically prevents buffer under run errors by predicting them before they occur. This technology enables stable writing in the following situations where buffer under run occurs may otherwise occur in a conventional drive.

Be selective before using your CD RW, especially if you have just one CD drive. In this case, it is assumed that you have just one CD drive and love making backups, you must be careful to see the source CDs. If you see there are a lot of scratches on the surface of a CD, just leave it and don’t use it on your CD RW drive.