high-speed drive
October 18, 2006 12:41 PM   Subscribe

I bought some CD-RWs and noticed that they're for "high-speed drives only." Does anyone now if the internal drive on an iBook G4 qualifies?
posted by dearleader to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)
 
It really shouldn't matter. The media and the drives will only read and write data at the maximum speed that both components share. So if you have a 24x drive but only 4x media, the write speed will be 4x. If you have a 2x drive and 4x media, the write speed will be 2x. However, this is technology so YMMV. Nothing with computers ever works the way it really should/you want it to.
posted by ChazB at 1:01 PM on October 18, 2006


Oh and to add to what I said, even the oldest iBook G4's DVD/CD-RW drive coud write CD-RW discs at up to 10x speed. Most CD-RW media is between 2x and 8x. You should be OK.
posted by ChazB at 1:06 PM on October 18, 2006


Response by poster: hmmm.. this say 8X to 12X compatible, and "for writing and rewriting only in drives bearing the CD-RW high-speed logo..."
but seems i should be OK?
posted by dearleader at 1:23 PM on October 18, 2006


"for writing and rewriting only in drives bearing the CD-RW high-speed logo..."

Stuff like this is generally marketing BS that they put on products so they have an out when you get a disc from a bad batch. I doubt many drives have the "CD-RW high-speed logo" on them.

Try one. Worst case scenario is it doesn't work and you take it to a big box store and swap it for stuff that will.
posted by ChazB at 2:15 PM on October 18, 2006


Some complete speculation, since I haven't seen a really definitive answer so far:

Different CDRWs use different dyes, which require different laser power and so forth. It's possible that a dye was developed for higher-speed CD writers that required something the lower-speed writers couldn't do. The disc has a pre-recorded area (ATIP) which tells the drive how to record into it, but perhaps older drives can't handle some newer dye types, or something.
posted by hattifattener at 8:08 PM on October 18, 2006


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