Testing

System:
PIII 1Ghz
128MB PC133 SDRAM
Maxtor 60GB 7200 RPM ATA100 Hard Drive
Maxtor 80GB 5400 RPM Hard Drive
Belkin FireWire PCI Card

For testing, the file cache in Nero was setup to be on the 80GB FireWire drive to provide the most performance to the Que!Fire.

For testing the drive I used CD Tach 98 by TestaLabs and Sisoft Sandra's CD/DVD Benchmarking tools. These tests showed the read performance of the drive. To test the writing portion I used Nero Burning ROM Software. In the tests, I burned a 651MB test file to both a CDR and CDRW disc. I used the highest speed capable by the drive with Burn Proof technology and disk at once(DAO) enabled. Here are the results:

Below are the Sisoft Sandra CD/DVD Benchmark results displaying the drive performance. The results show that in comparison to a typical 32X CD drive, the Que!Fire performed very well.

Below are the results from CD Tach 98.

Just for a little comparision, here is the results of CD Tack 98 on an old HP 8110i CD Writer.

As you can see, the performance on the Que!Fire is very good and its CPU utilization is about normal for CD Drives.

Next I tested out the amount of time it took to burn a CDR and CDRW.

Burn times on CD's were as follows:

Princo CDRW Disc at 10X write speed - 8 min
Ricoh CDR Platinum at 12X write speed - 6 min 55 secs

I also conducted a few overburning tests to see if the drive supported it. I found that it did support overburning and I was successfuly at putting a 659MB file on a 650MB CDRW and have it function properly.

For testing out the Burn Proof technology I burned a CD while opening up a wide range of programs from Access to imaging software. I also copied several large files from various drives as well as surfed the Internet. All these tasking operations did not cause the CD creation process to fail once. The only way I was able to screw up the process was to either fully lock my computer up or turn the power off to in while in the middle of a write.

All the tests that I threw at the Que!Fire passed without a problem.

Conclusion
After conducting me review on the Que!Fire 12X10X32X CD Writer, I can honestly say that I am very impressed with its ease of use, and its performance. Best of all the incorporation of Burn Proof technology not only eliminates the making of coasters but it also gives back the freedom to conduct other tasks on the computer while a CD is burning. There is no more need to worry about a CD being messed up and money wasted. At a price of $299.99 the drive may seem to be expensive but I think with what all you receive with it is well worth the money.