I was wondering... can a TDK 16/10/40 which is a plextor drive with firmware version 1.02 (not the ones with firmware 5.31 which is a Sanyo) support reading data RAW+96? (We know that plextor only support reading data RAW; therefore, you cannot copy Safedisk2 CD's). If that is the case, if we take the TDK 1.02 firmware and put it in the plextor, could that make the plextor able to read data RAW+96 and therefore copy SafeDisk2 CDs?

Those are two big IF's.

Heh, my shitty little 100$ Teac 4x4x32 does RAW better than any other CDrom I've ever owned, and that's about 2 or 3 dozen. I think my next drive will be a Teac too. Teac is generally crap, at least in my memory, but this bargain make-do CDRW has been one of the best I've ever owned. I burned 763Mb onto a 80minute CDR yesterday. Beat that, Plextor. And mine cost 100$ a year ago!!

"Reaction by Nila on Saturday 24 March 2001
Even when the Plextor comes out I dont plan to rush out and upgrade to it. Fuck them, why do I want to buy a drive that cannot support RAW mode at all. At least with my 12432TSi I know I can do RAW mode by simply going back to a previous Firmware. You guys buying new plextors aint gonna be able to so your gonna be screwed when it comes to copying certain things.

I used to love plextor, now, like a bitter partner, I hugely dislike them - Giving in to industry pressure and dropping RAW support."

That was an uncensored quote from http://www.cdfreaks.com/news2.php3?ID=1465

Prooves a point, huh ?

Forge, might be more constructive to lobby all our representatives to make sure there are clauses that force companies that use copy protected media to:

Label it on the box.
Provide cheap/free back-up media.
Provide perpetual replacement of media.

Mind you, I'd like to beat every little pirate out there within an inch of their lives, but trying to get our corrupt and bought government to actually work for the common citizen for once might be nice, too.

I'm looking into uninhabited islands in the South Pacific. Anyone else want to go along and start a tech commune where we can do what we want with hardware/software we buy? We'll prohibit crippled CDRWs first thing.

OT: Forge #21, lynx is plenty smart enough. Seriously, that browser is still my #1 choice when it comes to browsing. If it doesn't work well under lynx, I usually move on.

Back on the track, DMCA aside, the sd2's probably infringe upon the Fair Use clause of the Copyright acts as well. Bloody bastards.

Man can you imagine what the future will be like with SD protected disks and Windows XP rampant technologies out there? Say an emergency hits and I can't rebuild a NT server box because I couldn't copy the CD, and my old 4 year old CD doesn't work because of a single scratch? I need it now, not later, when they send me a replacement!

Or a Norton Corporate edition CD with protection. Virus infects everything, including the AV server, and yes, suddenly, the CD won't work, it happens, and my entire fucking company is burned because of a restriction that prevented me from copying something I legally owned earlier. They are fringe scenarios, but definately something to consider for the future...

Can someone do a write up to clarify this SD2 dealie-bob that plextor has?

Yeah, that't it. Plextor as well as some other burners out there that manage to make a copy of SD2 protected game can only run it inside this same burner ONLY. And sometimes not even in the burner....

I repeat if you have the old 12xPlextor and manage to find an old verison of ther firmware (1.2 or 1.1 and lower if i'm not mistaking) you will be able to make PERFECT copyes of SD2 games that play in any CD-ROM. The newwer firmware doesn't allow that as i have previously stated.

Point is : there are many more burners out there that do a better job then The "new" Plextors at burning SD2 protected cdz.

Adi

I'm going to go buy a SD2 burning compatable burner.... and go pirate as many games as I possibly can.... then I'm going to shove them up gerbil #20's ass.

Hey #20... the point here is not whether or not people should be burning games... that's not yours to decide... nor is it Plextor's.... the point is that when people go out to buy a burner they are looking for certain features, and if the the burner doesn't have them (Plextor, in this case) they aren't going to buy the burner.

That's it, that's all, that's everything.

So whatever your views are on copyrighted material.... shove it. All people are doing here is making a list of what the Plextor can do and can't do, and what it does well and what it sucks at. Then people can buy or not buy after collecting all the info. And whether they use it to distribute the bible on CD to third world countries or to create the largest kiddy/goat porn collection known to man is none of your damn business.

Gerbil #7 (Adi) -- are you saying that the Plextor will copy a SafeDisk2-protected CD, but you can only play it back on the Plextor and not other players? Or does it simply fail to copy the SD2 stuff entirely? Not sure I understood your complaint... :)

Sorry, AG#20. Just because you are some kind of saint about keeping your CDs in good shape, doesn't mean I have to be. I have quite a few games that're damaged and I can't be bothered to ship off 20$ plus S&H to replace a disc. (If the manufacturer even offers disc replacement. Lots of companies end that service as soon as the disc mastering run is complete.) You're either very very lucky, and/or you have no kids near your CDs, and/or you are particularly anal about caring for the little suckers. Sometimes my 5 year old niece comes to visit and decides to play frisbee with my CDs. Sometimes the flake if they're left in the sun, and sometimes I'm just a lazy dumbass and they get dropped behind the desk, to get pulled out by a chair wheel a month later (ouch). For me, being able to copy a game and run off the copy is a necessity, and the great majority of game licenses allow you '1 (one) copy for backup or archival purposes'. I don't feel it's Plextor's place to say what I can and cannot be copying.
(BTW, this is a test. I'm using the lynx text browser to write it, and I want to see how bright lynx is.)

#15, yeah I do have a Plextor drive. Bought it because of TWO reasons, neither of them have anything to do with copying CDs.

First: burnproof
Second: speed.

I've got about 150 CD-ROMS. Never scratched one bad enough that it didn't work.

I've got music CDs that are over 10 years old and still work fine. Hell, the CD player that I had when I got them died a few years ago.

Sorry, just don't buy it.

Hmm, the lowest common denominator certainly turned out for this one. Believe what you will, I am one of those few who actually does buy games and copy them. I run off of backups exclusively, and keep my originals in the boxes. It's a BS excuse that lots of warez fiends hide behind, but I bought Mechcommander 4 times. 4 full retail purchases. *NOT* making a backup to work from would be just stupid, in this situation. For me, not being able to copy Safedisc2 games is more than an inconvenience. I don't do well with CDroms, they have a tendency to die. A copy getting scratched is an irritation, and an hour to rerip and reburn from the original. An original getting scratched is 50$ and an hour drive to CompUsa or the mall. Screw Plextor. I don't want to hear 'Learn how to not scratch your cdroms, dumbass' either. That's like telling somebody to give up electricity. It's possible, but there's no way it's going to happen. If Plextor won't copy my games, I'll stick with my POS 4x4x32 TEAC.

More of this! Hell let's do up every drive out there! How about a a round robin where we all compare results on identical CD's/reads/writes. A do it yourself Consumer's Report.

Also, does programs like CloneCD bypass firmware restrictions? I manage to get perfect backups of stuff I can't backup at all using standard proceedures.

sorry bout that Damage.. i'll behave :)

OK, kiddies, enough with the potty mouth. Disagree, sure, but play nice.

#14, you are not worth answering to, but then again i feel that i should...

You see when you have 50+ titles and some of them get damaged, you have to contact the company in order to get a replacement for them. But that's NOT the main issue here.

The issue is that Plextor made fools of us all. All those years we praised them for their quality and their devotion to only put the best product on the market and now, they stab us in the back, much like ASUS did with their iPanel....

I'm shure you're a Plextor owner( aka zealot) and need to express your frustration when you find out that your beloved product is not exaclty what is suposed to be ie THE BEST, but when the company tryes to screw us over, you have to fight back and aknowledge you've been burned.

I wouldn't give a s*** if plxtors were not able to copy SD2 cdz from the beggining but when they take out that feature saying it was NEVER there, i get pissed.

Adi

#11, tried contacting the publisher to obtain a replacement disc?

Either you have some major problems taking care of your discs or you are just another fucking pirate.

Why the hell didn't come my username? anyway...
And my PASSW does not work!!1... f*ck!
---------
Thorz.

Yes Gerbil, I am 100% agree with you in this one! Plextor has go down and its good reputation is screwed. I REALLY hope that they fix this in a firmware update, but I don't have so much hope for that.
And by the way, the people that made Safedisk 2 is Macovision, the same that have the actual DVD protection.
The sad part is that NONE of the 16X drives can backup Safedisk 2. Maybe the best is to have a cheap 8x model for this task and the Plextor for all the other things.
Great review drevil, very informative like always.
Anyway, I hope somebody crack a firmware for the 16X for giving us back to the Plextor paradise.

#9, what exactly didn't you understand from my message ??

Plextor is NOT the god of CD-RW anymore.(period)

The fact that they modified their firmware in order to make it unable to copy SD2 copy protected games it LAME and disgusting. Users were NOT warned about it and Plextor officially claims that they're innocent and that their CD-writers ca not copy those cdz... But then how can they explain that the older firmware is able to do that ???? To that question they're silent even today !

Plextor are a bunch of liars and i will not buy any more cd writers from them.

To the question : y copy copy protected cds ?

Because cdz get scratched, dirty and messed up by the kids that play with them. And if they don't work anymore, i'm screwed withought a backup. See my point now ?

Conclusion : Plextor SUCKS now.

Adi

Yeah! Have the decency to at least wait until they have finished! :p

#7, maybe because you shouldn't be copying fucking copy-protected games?

Anyone notice the CPU time on the Samsung when it hit 8x on reading those files....43%!!!!!!!! Wow. Compared to the Plextor's 12% or so the Samsung really killz your CPU time.

OK what the hell ??? How come you foregot to mention that copies of SafeDisck 2 protected games ONLY run in the plextor and not in other drives ??

This is a major drawback when you want to backup your cdz and should have been reported.

Who cares that this is a plextor ? If a cheap ass 8x Philips can copy SafeDisk2 games why can't this drive ?

And how about the fact that an old version of the firmware for the old 12x plex was able to copy SafeDisk 2 and that the new revisions of this firmware using the same hardware are not capable anymore ? And how come that old revision firmware has myasteriously dissapeared from plextor's website after it was discovered by pple from www.cdrinfo.com and especially www.cdfreaks.com ?

So many unanswered questions that makes Plextors look like ABIT does theese days...

I have lost my respect from plextor. They had a good name cause they were the best, but now they caved in to the threats of those morons from Macromedia(?) that makes safedisk.

Adi

Anyone have the SCSI drive? I was looking at getting the external Ultra Wide version in the cool blue color.

Some more I would like to see is:

1. What is the exact media manufactorer type? Imation, Kodac, etc?
2. Test different Media. I've heard wonderful things about Kodac Gold... I've also heard the media has more of a factor than the actual drive sometimes, when the drives are only a few models apart, at least...

Wow... this is cool. I have almost the exact same system specs as the reference machine. Quite a useful review!

Originally Posted by [OCAU]Sidewinder
I\'ve had the 16/10/40 in my rig for almost two months, now. I\'ve burned over 30 discs, both data and music (cd compilations mostly). Haven\'t made a coaster yet. This is the third burner I\'ve owned (first Plex) and is by far the best yet. Can\'t say enough good things about it. Even the software bundle is great. I don\'t have a single criticism of this product and consider it a great value, even at the US$248 price I paid!

\'Winder

Originally Posted by drevil
Man, I must\'ve had Samsung on the brain or something. Anyway, it\'s fixed now. Thanks.