Lite-ON LXR-24101A external CD-RW - Page 1

- Introduction

External drives are usually addressed to office and desktop users who need a portable and easy to install CD recorder. Lite-On moved forward and shipped an external drive with an additional advantage: The high supported writing/reading performance. Lite-On 24/10/40 external drive can be connected to USB1.1/2.0, IEEE1394, PCMCIA and PC card bus. It would be interesting to see whether we can consider Lite-On's solution as an alternative for our daily recording needs.

- Features

The drive supports 24x writing (Z-CLV), 10x re-writing, has a 2MB Buffer, "SMART-BURN" as the main anti-buffer under run technology among with adjusting writing strategy system. The drive also features the SMART-X technology to support high speed Digital Audio Extraction (DAE) & VCD data extraction. The VAS Vibration Absorber System Mechanism is used to reduce vibration & noise during read & write.

The maximum reading speed of the drive is 40x (CAV). The exact writing speeds are 4x, 8x, 12x,16x (CLV), 20x (16-20x), 24x (16-24x), (Z-CLV). The re-writing speeds are 4x, 8x and 10x (CLV). The drive also supports 40x (CAV) DAE speed. These specifications are applied only when the drive is connected through USB 2.0 or IEEE 1394 interfaces. The performance varies according to the connected interface, as the following table shows:

The drive is equipped with a built-in E-IDE D-type 36pin connector, and with the appropriate adapter cable the drive works with USB1.0/1.1/2.0 interface, optional to IEEE1394-1995/1394a (FireWire) interface or PCMCIA2.1/Card Bus5.0. Lite-On LXR-24101A supports up to Ultra-DMA Mode2 33.3MB/sec.

Lastly, the drive supports all the known writing modes (DAO, SAO, TAO and RAW), among with packet write and overburning options.

- The package

The package supplied contained: the external drive, 1 piece of Lite-On 80min multispeed CD-R blank , 1 piece of Lite-On 80min 4-12x HS-RW blank, the USB adapter cable, the AC/DC power adapter with the power cord. The software supplied with the drive was Nero Burning ROM and Ahead InCD (for packet writing use). The package also contains a quick installation manual, and a user's manual CD-ROM.

Lastly as the package says the drive is "XP" compatible which was confirmed from our test results, since the drive worked without any problems at UDMA-33 mode.

As you can see the drive lines are smoothly designed, and the Lid Cover (top-opened tray) is silver colored with the "Let's Write" logo in the middle of it. The green "busy" LED and the red Write/Rewrite LED among with the open button and the the emergency eject hole are placed on the front of the drive.

The dimensions of the drive are 152.0 x 44.3 x 198.0 mm (WxHxD) and weights 600g.

In the right side of the drive there are the earphone, a stereo mini-jack for headphones and power speakers, and the volume control.

On the rear panel of the drive you can find the host adapter IDE interface connector and the power connector.

- Installation

The drive worked in UDMA33 mode and identified itself as "LITE-ON LXR-24101A". The tests were made under Win XP operation system. Lite-On LXR-24101A is a March 2002 model with firmware revision v8S01 installed. We used the newer build of Nero (5.5.8.0), InCD (3.21), and CloneCD (4.0.0.0) for our recording tests.