Samsung SW212 12-8-32 CDRW Review

The more reliable the burner, the less problems you will have with "buffer underrun error" and the unfortunate creation of a large CD-coaster collection. While there are a few technologies which have been developed to combat this annoying and costly problem, one of the best solutions is to make sure the burner you get has a large internal buffer. The SW212 CDRW has a good-sized 8MB buffer on board.

The Samsung SW212 comes with Easy CD Creator 4, IDE cable, Audio cable, Screws, instructions, and a blank CDRW and CDR disk.

SW212 Specs
Disc Types Supported in read mode	CD-DA, CD-ROM mode 1, CD-ROM XA mode 2, Form 1, Form 2, CD-plus, CD-Extra, Photo-CD (Single, multi-session), Video CD ready, Enhanced CD, CD-I/FMV, CD-R, CD-RW, CD-Text
Disc types supported in write mode	CD-R, CD-RW
Erasing disc types	CD-RW
Disc diameter	12cm, 8cm
Data Transfer rate: CD-R (write)	300KB/sec (2X), 600KB/sec (4x), 1200KB/sec (8X), 1800KB/sec (12X)
Data Transfer rate: CD-RW(write)	300KB/sec (2X), 600KB/sec (4x), 1200KB/sec (8X)
Data Transfer Rate: read mode	4800 KB/sec (max), PIO mode 4, DMA mode 2
Access stroke	CD-RW: 120ms, CD: 100ms
Front Panel	Eject button, Indicator LED, headphone output, volume wheel
Buffer memory	8MB
Flash memory	512KB
Drive mounting	Horizontal, Vertical
Writing method	DAO, TAO, SAO, Packet writing

The drive itself is IDE so it can simply be plugged into an existing space on the Primary or Secondary IDE channel. In the past it used to be that any good CD-burner had to be SCSI. Nowadays this is not so much the case anymore.

The installation of the SW212 was completely painless in our Win98SE test system. All the drivers were already available to the system, so all we had to do was install the copying software which Samsung included.

The bundled software included Adaptec Easy CD creator 4, Direct CD, and Jewel Case Creator.

Direct CD is useful when you need to make a backup copy of a full CD-ROM worth of material. Rather then copying the contents of the original CD to the hard drive, this utility enables the computer to copy the disk directly. You have to have an alternate CD-ROM for this to work, and from our experiences, the process is most reliable when set to 8X or even sometimes 4X (depending on your system). So far we have yet to test out a burner which can consistently copy at 12X without stumbling into "buffer underrun error" problems, even though it is potentially capable of doing so.