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Introduction

As far as CD Burners go, external drives are where it’s at. Being able to use the drive at home, work, school, a friend’s, and not to mention those “unforeseen” situations, is a real boon. The external drive in question today is the Que! Fire CD-RW 16x/10x/40x which supports both Mac and PC, extending its value even further.

Of course, fast drives like the Que! Fire CD-RW 16x/10x/40x require a fast interface like firewire, which is an added expense. This can also be inconvenient in some situations where firewire (or which ever interface technology) is not available. This is just the state of technology right now as the most common expansion interface, USB, is just too slow for these faster drives (current USB CD burners max out at 4x). This is soon to change, however, with USB 2.0 and next-gen firewire just around the corner – one of these will surely be replacing USB as the interface du jour. Personally, I hope USB 2.0 takes that role because it is backwards compatible with current USB devices. Unfortunately, Microsoft has announced that Windows XP won’t have built-in support for USB 2.0 so I suppose it’s going to be a waiting game.

That aside, here are the specs for this drive:

Specs

Write Speeds:	16x, 12x, 8x, 4x, 2x, 1x
Re-Write Speeds:	10x, 8x, 4x, 2x, 1x
Max Read:	40x
Data Transfer Rate:	4.8MB/sec
Access Time:	140ms
Max Capacity:	700MB / 80min
Buffer:	2MB
Write-Methods:	DAO (disc at once), TAO (track at once), SAO (session at once), Packet (variable, fixed packet)
Other:	External Firewire (IEEE 1394), Mac / PC compatible, BURN-Proof

The drive in this unit is made by Plextor so it is essentially an external version of the Plexwriter 16x/10x/40x drive that Phil reviewed a couple of weeks ago. The major difference (other than the plain fact that this one is external) is the interface – this drive is firewire based whereas the Plexwriter is IDE based. It will be interesting to see how this affects the performance of the Que! Fire drive.

Like the Plexwriter, this unit features Sanyo’s BURN-Proof technology, which is a welcome addition to the CD burning world. This technology, along with Ricoh’s JustLink, effectively rid the CD burning process of the much maligned (and rightly so) buffer-underrun. Keep in mind that these technologies are not a magic potion for your burning woes – slow systems won’t be able to burn faster because a slow system will never be able to supply data to the CD-RW drive fast enough. What these technologies can do for you and your adequate system though, is give you a healthy dose of assurance that all of your burns will end with a smile.

As a side note, Que! Fire drives are used quite extensively in a number of schools (especially multimedia and tech schools) which students to backup their data. This adds a fair sized chunk of credibility to the QPS and their drives.

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