Plextor 121032S?

by **clawsnoel** on Tue Oct 21, 2003 6:58 am

Anyone have a Plextor 121032S, the 12x SCSI internal burner? I was thinking about picking one up on ebay but I'm not sure if the fact that it is a couple of years old technology if it had any major drawbacks when related to the latest and greatest Lite-ons and the Plextor Premium, for example.

by **oslik2** on Tue Oct 21, 2003 10:35 am

my brother has one, and he just replaced it with Lite-on

no major drawbacks, it has burnproof, what else do you need...
it copies CD in about 7 or 8 minutes, and it's ok if you're not in a hurry.
that is until you see someone burn one in 2 minutes, and the next thing you know you receive a new Liteon from newegg

by **CDRecorder** on Tue Oct 21, 2003 10:39 am

My opinion is that it would be much better to buy a new drive, such as the Lite-On LTR-52327S or the Plextor Premium. They have more features, such as the ability to check for C1 errors with CDSpeed, and obviously, they are faster. Also, you might be able to get an LTR-52327S for a lower price, as they usually cost about $40 at www.newegg.com. The black version of the LTR-52327S is actually on sale there for a few more hours for $33.99 with free shipping.

by **clawsnoel** on Tue Oct 21, 2003 10:45 am

Ok. Well, I'm an aesthetics freak and also love SCSI but I'm having a tough time justifying the 401240S plextor. It is an awesome drive, but, again, not as fast as others (we're talking second here, though...) and five times the price.

Anyone have the 40x Plextor SCSI burner? If so, what do you think?

by **CDRecorder** on Tue Oct 21, 2003 11:07 am

I still think that the Lite-On LTR-52327S or Plextor Premium would be a better choice. Assuming the computer in which you plan to use the drive is the one in your signature, you should have no problems using an IDE drive at full speed. I personally don't think it's worth paying extra for the 40x SCSI drive, nor do I think it's worth sticking with a slow 12x drive to save money.

Also, the last time I used a Plextor 121032S (in a computer belonging to someone else), I kept getting power calibration errors. When I wrote the same disc in a Toshiba DVD recorder (also not mine), the discs were written without problems.

Edit: Both the Plextor and the Lite-On look nice, too. :wink:

by **jeldrid** on Tue Oct 21, 2003 11:10 am

I actually just replaced my Plextor 121032s with an LTR-52327S. I really miss the SCSI because of the way an IDE drive can affect system performance while it is in use, but the speed at which I can burn CDs, now, far outweighs that drawback for me. It also sped up my boot time because I don't have to wait for my POS scsi adapter to scan each ID.

All in all, the Plextor was a great piece of equipment. Honestly, I don't recall a single coaster (oh, I'm sure there were at least one or two, but I don't remember them).... As others have mentioned, though, new drives have a few useful features that can help things along when ripping music, creating images, etc...

I'd sell you my old plextor cheap, but its in my wife's computer now.

by **CDRecorder** on Tue Oct 21, 2003 11:15 am

jeldrid wrote:I really miss the SCSI because of the way an IDE drive can affect system performance while it is in use

How is that? CPU usage is very low when I burn at 52x with my LTR-52327S drives on my 1.2GHz Athlon computer.

by **jeldrid** on Wed Oct 22, 2003 5:06 pm

There is a pretty big difference. My CPU usage is low while burning, as well, but when the drive initializes at the beginning of a burn my system slows to a crawl for a moment. When it is spinning up to read a new CD, there is a little bit of a hiccup. A few other situations also demonstrate a marked difference, at times.

If you haven't used scsi, the concept might not click with you... Basically, burning with a scsi drive is almost like not doing anything on your computer at all... IDE just sucks. It is a LOT better than it used to be, but it still sucks.

If there is some magical configuration setting that I am missing...please enlighten me, but I consider myself to be a fairly adept computer user so I kinda doubt I am missing anything.

For the record, my system is a 1.7ghz athlon w/512mb of ram on an a7v8x.

by **CDRecorder** on Wed Oct 22, 2003 5:26 pm

I occasionally notice a small hiccup when I insert a CD, but this mainly happens with discs that automatically try to run programs when they are inserted. My CPU usage is low during burning, too. I am running a 1.2GHz Athlon. I do have to admit that I've never used SCSI much. As long as DMA is enabled (and I assume that it is because your CPU usage would be high during burning if it wasn't), everything should work fine.

I guess that whether or not you want SCSI is up to you, but my take on it is that IDE is better mainly because the performance is good and because the prices are so much lower for IDE drives and controllers.

by **jeldrid** on Thu Oct 23, 2003 11:50 am

but my take on it is that IDE is better mainly because the performance is good and because the prices are so much lower for IDE drives and controllers.

That's understandable. I mean, that's why I'm using IDE. Just remember that there are a few very good reasons why SCSI is so much more expensive.

by **wicked1** on Thu Oct 23, 2003 12:31 pm

How about converting your ide drives to firewire.I just did that. It is very fast.They call it the replacement for SCSI.The firewire 400 adapter is 60 bux and it converts 2 ide drives to firewire.I can burn to 4 burners at once now with different compilations without a problem.I couldnt do that at all with IDE.

by **CDRecorder** on Thu Oct 23, 2003 1:10 pm

That's a good idea, Wicked1. That is an internal device, right? Does it require a firewire card or port, or does it plug into the PCI bus?

Plextor 121032S?

Plextor 121032S?

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