Home > Consumer Reviews > I/O Magic DR-CDRW446EU 4x4x6 External USB 1.1 CD-RW Drive

If I could give this CD-RW zero stars I could. The editorial review says plug-n-play and you're all set. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I installed this CD-RW through the USB 1.1 port on my T20 IBM Thinkpad (PIII 700MHz, 128RAM, Win2k). Right from the get go it wouldn't work.

1) You can't see roughly 95% of the files on exisitng data CD-RW's.

2) When writing files to CD-RW it wrote a strange accompanying file in the same folder for each data file. When opened with WordPad, the new file contains thousands of Chinese characters (no kidding, Chinese! Not those funny Windows characters but real Chinese).

3) All formatting of CD-RW's fails within one minute.

4) 50% of the time you can't even eject your CD's with the eject button. Even when the drive is not reading or writing and "ready" light is on, the open/close button simply does nothing. You have to turn the drive off and reboot just to get your CD out.

I checked the I/O Magic website and it is cluttered with message boards complaining about all kinds of other weird problems with I/O magic optical products. The comments on technical support are no better.

Don't waste your money. Look somewhere else for your CD-RW solution.

I received this drive in 1 day after purchase! The I/O magic drive is used externally with my IBM thinkpad A20M, 700 Mhz,with Windows 98ME, and it works flawlessly. There were no errors, comflicts, or other problems. In my view, the trick to installing the drive is to utilize the NERO software. As I read the prior review, I would suggest that the set up wizard instructions in the users manual be skipped. Install the driver, but then go to the NERO software installation procedure, and you're ready to go! In fact, I started copying the supplied CD-RW disk within 15 minutes after opening the box! I am very satisfied with this product,and its gets 5 stars...