Features:
- Store data and images quickly and easily
- 4x/4x/24x performance
- Create, share, and store data, photos, music, and more on high-capacity CDs
- Keep your files safe, accessible, and transferable
- Write up to 600 KB per second, read up to 3.5 MB per second
Description:
Hewlett-Packard CD-Writer drives have consistently been stable workhorses, and the CD-Writer Plus 8250i is no exception. Out of the gate, this thoroughbred proves its worth by delivering on advertised speeds and producing readable CDs in every CD-ROM drive we tested--even those burned at full speed. In this age of 8x CD-R drives, it's comforting to know that 4x drives such as the 8250i are not cheap but simply inexpensive and built to handle the rigors of extended service. We found the CD-Writer Plus 8250i to be an excellent addition to a faster CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive. While the 24x read speed is certainly adequate for most applications, its slow random-access speed of 156 milliseconds is readily apparent when compared to that of typical 40x to 50x CD-ROM drives with speeds of 80 to 90 milliseconds. As such, we put the 8250i through the paces by making it a slave of a DVD-ROM drive on the secondary IDE bus. This is the toughest location for any ATAPI burner to be because if burns are likely to fail, they'll fail from here. True to form, the 8250i performed admirably in all tests without producing a single badly burned CD (typically called "coasters"). If you're a beginner at installing devices like these, we recommend you get some help. The 8250i's documentation is poorly written and lacking in visuals. Otherwise, hardware installation is a breeze. Software comes on one CD-ROM and is easily installed via a single executable file. The CD-Writer Plus is powered by Adaptec-based software; it uses Easy CD Creator 3.5 for creating music and data discs and DirectCD 2.5d for writing to rewritable CD-RW media. If you're new to the world of burning discs, don't worry--HP offers a simple menu-driven interface that ties all the components together quite nicely. When you click on the Create a CD icon, you have four simple choices: make a music CD, copy an existing CD, make a data CD, or make a CD that is compatible with most other CD-ROM drives. We figured this last option would configure Easy CD Creator to burn discs at only 1x speed to ensure full compatibility with older drives. Instead, it acted like the make-a-data-CD feature. We used CD Tach from TestaCD Labs to perform all the read benchmarks on the drive. All the sequential read speeds for both CD-ROM and CD-RW media were well within HP's advertised range. Burning discs at the full 4x speed took approximately 23 minutes from start to finish (including the two- to three-minute closing of the disc session), while duping a full CD-ROM took 18 minutes. The software also directly supports the copying of music CDs and the creation of music CDs from digital WAV files. Unfortunately, the included version of Adaptec Easy CD Creator (3.5c) doesn't support the burning of MP3 digital music directly to CD music. This problem only affects older CD-RW drives, however. Once you format a disc, using Adaptec's DirectCD software, you can write the disc to use DirectCD's packet writing technology. This means you can drag and drop files from the desktop or the Explorer directly onto the drive as if it were a large floppy drive. After you remove the disc, you can read CD-RW media in any multiread-compatible CD-ROM and/or DVD-ROM drive. Burning data directly to the 8250i using DirectCD takes around 54 minutes. But as there's a certain amount of overhead associated with packet writing, the total amount of data the HP SureWriter Plus can write to a single piece of CD-RW media is approximately 513 MB. (Read our FAQ for more info about packet writing and random erase.) After you burn data to CD-RW media, you can delete it, just as you would delete data off a hard drive to free up more space. Generally, writing small amounts of data, such as documents, is instantaneous, while larger 13 MB files take well over a minute. Deleting files is much faster though--an included CD-RW Erase utility destroys all formatting on a CD-RW disc. We found the HP CD-Writer Plus 8250i to be an excellent drive and a great value in its price range. If you want a burner that gets the work done, without any bells and whistles, we recommend you give the HP 8250i a try--you won't be sorry. Pros:
- Never produced a buffer-underrun (bad burn)
- Performed to advertised specifications
- Software install was simple and well documented
Cons:
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