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Iomega 31361 Predator 8x4x32 External CD-RW for Firewire

Iomega 31361 Predator 8x4x32 External CD-RW for Firewire

List Price: $329.99
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: not good
Review: a friend of mine has this burner and has had no problems with it on both a mac and a pc, which is why i purchased it for my g4 cube. however i was only able to make one good cd out of about 15 tries that are now in the trash. the predator looks nice and is very compact.. great for on the go, but it does not have the new burn proof technology that prevents the fast drive from outwriting the speed of the computer.. basically you're computer can't keep up with these superfast drives nowadays, so the faster adapters and cables you try, the worse it gets. you can try burning at 2x, but it is not very dependable. many burners out there today have this burnproof technology on it which 'saves' the cd if this underbuffering should happen. so it is advisable to purchase one of the new burners with the technology rather than this one without.

overall it seems to be a matter of luck. i have several friends that have no problem with the predator with the usb adapter on 4x and some on the 2x speed on both mac and pc. others, like myself have had no luck at all with any speed. i even exchanged it for another one, again with no luck. spend your money somewhere else.

and yes, tech support is not helpful at all... they are not very knowledgeable and can only read things out of a book.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Painful!! What a disappointment
Review: I actually preordered this prior to its release about 3 years ago, and since have wasted countless discs additional money on a Firewire PC card (didn't help at all) and have banished this unit in the trash heap of old PC parts. I eventually purchased an internal CD burner for my laptop, and a different Iomega external drive.

Frankly, I'm surprised Iomega still develops this product. Reading these current reviews, I see the same problems I communicated with them in the past have not been resolved.

I think they named it the Predator since it acts as a Predator to your CDs, rendering them useless and causing an amazing amout of frustration.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Slow burn
Review: I am using an iMac DV SE 500 MHz with 1 GB memory (firewire). Out of about 60 CD's, I have ruined about 7. This is my first CD burner, so I don't have a lot to compare with. I do know when burning music CD's, if I try to burn above a 2x speed, I will get a disc error everytime, unless I burn direct from the computer hard disk, then I can get a better speed. Data CD's are faster. I usually use simulation mode first, and then burn the disc, thus saving CD's, but it takes twice as long to burn a disc. I also have a lot of trouble with the burner stopping during a burn, which requires an abort. Then the only way to get it going again, is to unplug the cabel from the computer and disconnect the power supply, then replug everything. Also, I hate the manual disc eject, which is on the bottom of the unit. The hook-ups on the burner are hard to use too, as they are hard to line up right. Even though the preditor is a beautiful little burner, I really wish I'd bought a different kind.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Not Good for Windows Me
Review: I bought this drive from Amazon a year ago for my Laptop which has windows Me, and it has been nothing but a problem using this drive. Everytime I add a new hardware the CD RW drive stops working and have to reinstall the entire OS and all softwares all over again in the Hard drive. Wish I had never bought this product. My experience is a real bad one the drive conflicts with new Hardwares Like Palm Pilot, Sony USB drives for Digital Camcorders or Still Cameras the most. There should be a better software for this device. One That is compatible with most Operating systems and devices and softwares.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: unreliable and feels cheap
Review: I bought this product thinking that it would be a good addition to my laptop. Wow... I was wrong. To start off, I was surprised by the size of the product-- It is bulky, requires an external power supply AND an external firewire converter that plugs onto the unit.

Next after looking over the case, I could tell it was super cheap quality. The plastic and lid begged to be broken or cracked in a laptop bag.

Finally I decided to try to burn some CD's. After making 12 CD coasters, I packed it up and sent it back. The only successful burn I did was using the CDR that came in the box at a 2X burn speed. All my other tests failed. In addition, the Adaptec add-on that comes with Media Player didn't recognize the drive.

I think Iomega needs to redo their drivers and fix a few things. This product is half-baked and needs to go back for reengineering.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Works great for me!
Review: I don't know what you are talking about , this CDRW working very well ... after few tests I have found out that it's all about the burnning software , Easy CD Creator ver 5 and up will do the job , Nero as well , no problem , ANY CD BURN - works fine for me !!
I don't understand the bad reviews

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Coaster-maker
Review: I have the USB version of this thingie, which works up to 4x for CD-burning, and deliberately went out of my way, and paid an extra $au300 for the Firewire adapter. The adapter plus my Predator is EXACTLY what you are buying here, except you wouldn't also have the USB adapter.

What a waste of money.

Firewire, at 8x speed, is essentially too fast for the Predator software, and the whole CD-burning process will freeze you machine (and ultimately crash it) and you'll have another coaster to add to the collection. You simply have to run the Predator at 4-speed and just accept the limitation.

But, unless you're a bozo like me who doesn't read US-based reviews before he buys, there are plenty of other CD-RWs out there that get far better reviews than the Predator.

Look carefully, waste no money.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Not the most reliable for it's price
Review: I spent the extra money on the Firewire over the USB connection because I thought there was going to be a big difference in speed. Nope. I have consistently been unable to write a disk at 8x on my G4, but I have heard this is the most common complaint with just about every cd-burner on the market. The manual Iomega gives you is extremely basic (how to plug in your cd-burner) providing barely any software information for PC users, and provides NOTHING for Mac users. It tells Mac users to refer to Toast's pdf manual. Not good insofar as service goes for a [price] product. I have had the following infuriating problems with it: it has been unable to read expensive cd-rws from Maxell and Fuji; the first time I tried to burn an audio cd and this happened, the cd-burner just stopped reading EVERY disk I put in it and I had to restart the computer several times until the burner decided to work again; the software is incompatible with MacOS 9.1, which is a pretty old OS. I mean, c'mon, don't sell us a burner without software that you can actually use with your computer. I was able to write a 680mb cd-rw in about 9 minutes at 4x, but it took me 20 minutes to write an 80 minute audio cd on a cd-r at 6x. You're not getting a lot of speed for the price, but I have yet to ruin a disc and the fact that power has to be running through the burner for it to eject a disc is obnoxious. The power supply is bulky and you can feel the burner getting very hot unless it's either unplugged or there's no cd in it. Fire hazard. If speed, portability, and price are issues for you, you may want to look elsewhere. The thing is also actually huge, despite how small the pictures make it look.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Very disappointed
Review: I thought this would be the perfect solution. I hoped to use it with my PC laptop as well as my iBook and G4. Whoops. My ratio of successful burns to wasted CD-R blanks is about 5 to 1. That really inflates the cost of media.

Connections are suspect, provided software doesn't support much, and other applications don't recognize the drive.

I'm ready to give up while I still can. I sure hope this is not the state of the art.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Biggest piece of junk I've every bought...
Review: If you have a shortage of coasters this is the drive for you. The software doesn't load correctly for either my pc or mac and after spending no less than 6 hours on the phone with Iomga's support, I give up. I would rate this thing with negative stars if possible.


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