I think you will agree that a design is one of the important factors when choosing an external CD-RW recorder. That is why the vendors are paying today so much attention to this aspect. In my opinion, the most interesting recorder today is the Iomega Predator with its cosmic design. Acer also takes seriously the appearance of its drives. A stylish 4406eu, for example, stands out for its posh silvery metallic color. Another interesting model from this company is 6424MU, better known as "MiniRW". These two devices will be talked about in this review.

Acer CRW-6424MU

Acer CRW-4406EU

Test results

Apart from the CD-ROM Teac 540E, for the performance comparison in reading operations we chose the Iomega Predator and the Iomega ZipCD.

CDWinBench 99 CD-ROM Transfer Rate

In the review on the Iomega recorders we showed that they worked at the highest possible data rates limited only by the USB interface (remember that 1.5 MBytes/s is a peak data rate for the USB 1.1). The Acer recorders are close but still outperformed by the Iomega drives. It is possible that the results of the Predator and ZipCD are the maximum what USB drives can reach. That is why it would be interesting to connect the Predator or MiniRW to the FireWire port. As soon as an opportunity becomes possible we will take advantage of it.

CPU utilization in the CD-ROM Transfer Rate tests:

The USB drives load the processor more than the more efficient IDE drives. But it is still nothing in comparison to the slow LPT CD-R/CD-RW drives.

CDWinBench 99 CD-ROM Access Time

Here the CRW-4406EU and CRW6424MU easily outshine the Iomega drives.

CDWinBench 99 CPU Utilization

Here the Acer drives are also superb. The total CPU utilization is quite good as compared with more economical IDE models.

Time taken for CD recording

Recording of the CD-R Sony CDQ-74N1 (cyanine, 16x rated recording speed) 4x

It takes almost the same time for all recorders to write at 4X. But the 6x support allows the MiniRW to beat the others. It is not easy to make the 6x recording stable pumping data through the USB bus. That is why the buffer load was 70-75%.

Nevertheless, no tricks allowed me to make the buffer load lower than 60%. The Seamless Link was activated only with a really crippled program which made the Windows to put out blue screens.

Recording of the CD-R Mirex (phthalocyanine, 12x rated recording speed) 4x

Recording of the "noname" CD-R disc (cyanine, the rated record speed is unknown) 4X

The time can be considerably saved only when recording at 6X on the Acer MiniRW. The time spent for recording discs at 4x is almost equal among the participants.

Time spent for full formatting of a CD-RW disc in UDF format

Philips CD-RW 4x

The CRW-4406EU is so slow because of the drivers (which should be improved). At the same time, the newer CRW-6424MU yields to the CD-RW drives from Iomega.

Recording of the CD-RW disc (UDF)

Philips CD-RW 4x

But the Acer drives shine at recording of the CD-RW discs. The CRW-6424MU takes a 1-minute lead over its predecessor.

BLER factor of the recorded CD-R discs

* The Iomega Predator was recording Philips Silver Premium cyanine discs from TY.

(for these tests we used a device described in the fifth part of our review)

Such good results of the Acer CRW-4406EU were proved by the CDCATS SA3 station:

CD-R disc, recording speed	Acer CRW-4406EU
Mirex,4x
"noname", 4x

The results are quite good, though the 4x recorder could have performed much better.

The MiniRW, however, works a bit better than the Acer CRW-4406EU.

Nero CDSpeed

Acer CRW-6424MU

Graph of reading of the CD-R CD-R Sony CDQ-74N1 (6x writing speed)

Graph of reading of the CD-R Mirex (4x writing speed)

Graph of reading of the CD-R "noname" (4x writing speed)

Acer CRW-6424MU

Graph of reading of the CD-R CD-R Sony CDQ-74N1 (4x writing speed)

Graph of reading of the CD-R Mirex (4x writing speed)

Graph of reading of the CD-R "noname" (4x writing speed)

On the whole, the graphs look good. The only disadvantage is a fall on the graph of the "noname" disc recorded by the CRW-6424MU.

Test results of the recorded CD-R Sony CDQ-74N1

Test results of the recorded CD-R Mirex

CDSpeed test results of the recorded CD-R "noname."

Well, the results do not allow us to say who is a leader. The Predator reads discs faster than the Acer. But the CRW-6424MU and CRW-4406EU have a higher access speed than the Iomega drive.

CDSpeed test results of the recorded CD-RW discs in UDF.

CD-RW discs read almost at the same speed both in ISO and in UDF, which is very close to the the speed of reading of usual CD-R and CD-ROM discs.

Speed of reading data from discs (WinDiskTest)

CD-ROM Drive Analyzer

Below you can see how the graphs of all discs read under the Windows 2000 received with the CD Drive Analyzer look for both Acer drives:

it is very close to the graphs of the CDSpeed. In the Windows 98 the picture is the following:

Sound track extraction from audio CDs (CDDAE 99)

Acer CRW-6424MU

Acer CRW-4406EU

The quality of extraction of tracks is exceptional. But I think that any modern drive can show the same results at 4X.

Advanced DAE Quality

The detailed information on the tested parameters are given in the help file to the CDSpeed99 test program.

Well, these recorders are not the best for serious work with audio data. But despite the similarity of the drives in functions and in the operating speed, the MiniRW looks more attractive because of a possibility to work with discs with CD-Text data and because of the possibility to process data from Leadout.

Overburn

Acer CRW-6424MU

Acer CRW-4406EU

The recorder doesn't support the overburn function.

The Acer CRW-6424MU gives a possibility to use the whole possible disc size. Moreover, it detected the size of the 780 MBytes CD-R Rostok Media correctly, while the majority of the recorders define it as 80 MBytes.

Direct copying from recorded CDs to a hard disc

Conclusion and summary

The CD-RW drives from Acer with a USB interface are not the latest thing in the data storage field. Nevertheless, many might be interested in the original design of the Acer CRW-4406EU, not to speak of the MiniRW CRW-6424MU. While the first will look excellently in any office, the second will supplement any notebook, taking, at the same time, little space. Besides, both drives are relatively cheap for external devices.

Test programs:

• Ziff Davis CD WinBench 99 version 1.1
• Nero CDSpeed 99 version 0.83 Beta
• CDDAE 99 version 0.2 Beta
• CD-ROM Drive Analyzer version 2.31
• WinDiskTest 0.1 Beta

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