Product Reviews

The LaCie 12/10/32 doesn't have a catchy name, nor does it come in a curvy, cute, translucent case. But it does burn CDs at up to 12x, meaning that a full CD's worth of data can be burned in five minutes.

The other feature which makes the LaCie device stand out from the competition is that it connects to your Mac via FireWire. FireWire is significantly faster than USB - you'd never be able to record at 12x on a USB device - although not as fast as the fastest SCSI protocols. It's fast enough to provide the data rates needed for some types of 12x CD recording. Data rates are aided by the 2Mb buffer on the CD-RW, which provides the necessary data when data rates from the Mac fall below the required minimum for the speed selected.

The CD-RW is a Plextor PlexWriter housed in the standard LaCie desktop enclosure. A look round the back of the casing

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reveals two FireWire ports, a power switch, a power supply socket, and left and right channel audio phono ports. On the front are the standard eject button, volume control and headphone socket.

Like most CD-RWs, the LaCie 12/10/32 ships with a cut-down version of Adaptec's Toast 4.1.1. This version supports FireWire devices but lacks all but the most basic features needed for burning CDs.

Speed trap

We tested the LaCie CD-RW on a 400MHz Power Mac G3 with 256Mb of RAM, running Mac OS 9.0.4. We had varying degrees of success when trying to burn at 12x: some formats burned at that speed with no problems, while others didn't even come close to the necessary data rate. As you would expect, burning straight from another CD in the machine's internal CD-ROM drive can't be done at 12x, and we were also unable to burn mounted disk images at 12x. Unmounted disk images stored on the Mac's internal hard disk or on an external FireWire hard drive caused no problems at 12x. Likewise, burning in 'Files and Folders' mode from the internal hard disk was trouble-free at maximum speed.

For many people, being able to burn CDs at 12x won't be enough to justify shelling out for a new CD-RW. But it will be useful if burning CDs takes up a significant part of your working day. And while this drive will be superseded by the 16x device, which will become available in the coming months, it's a solid, reliable performer and reasonably priced.