Home > Consumer Reviews > Magic Spin 52x24x52x Internal CD-RW Drive

Sad but true, what seemed like a great value (stacked ceiling high at Office Depot, who ought to be ashamed) turns out to be a low-rent loss leader. I'm no installation expert, but I'm not a novice either. The 1-page installation guide was almost deliberately confusing, and there's no further support, phone, online, email... none. Period.
The included Nero software (more or less - an already out-of-date 'Limited' version) tries so hard to behave like it's been packed with a grown-up product, but the drive can't match it for efficiency.
With all the failed burns this clinker has produced, the only bigger stack of useless CDs around here is stamped 'AOL' -- and this drive is catching up fast.
The latest kink: I shelled out for a couple of other CD creation software packages, but - they can't access this brand! Well no wonder -- "iRiver", the makers of the Magic Spin (a name heavy on irony) has completely divorced itself from this product line and is busy delving heavily into a line of $500 MP3 players. (I pity the fool...) So -- you'll get no reply from them on this shoddy product, and no other support of any kind is available or forthcoming.
What the heck - it does copy CD's of all kinds pretty well, and for the price, I can't complain that I was taken that badly.

But taken I was. Avoid making the same mistake.

Had the drive for about 8 months, using it infrequently as a second CD-RW drive to burn a disk copy directly. While using it to install a new registered copy of MS-Windows XP Professional a heard a loud "pop' about 25 minutes into the process. The damn drive had destroyed the CD, shattering it into thousands of small bits. Needless to say, The disk was worth a lot more than this cheap, crappy drive.

I just installed this drive yesterday, replacing another drive that I had problems with from day one. I have installed a number of drives and found nothing unexpected about installing this one. After installation I was somewhat amazed at how well it worked. It reads very fast, not sure of the speed but much faster than any other CD I have had, and, with no special tweaks or shutting down of other applications I burned one CD. That burn ran at 52X from an image file. Not only did the 52X burn work but it did it to a blank CD rated 48X. I have never been able to burn a CD at the drive's rated speed before so I am more than pleased with this drive.

could someone please explain to me why in the hell my drive opens and closes none stop ever since i install this horrible drive. as soon as i installed it, it started this. it finally stopped opening and closing but when it stops the door stays open. what in the world is going on with this P.O.S. product. no contact info to be found anywhere. the product does not work because the door is wide open and if you try and shut it, it starts opening and closing again. could someone tell me what is going on. thank you, michael

In responce to earlier comments. All of these drives come with the same instructions. There is a jumper at the back of this drive to set operation before installing. Maybe if you need a movie on how to, then you should consider having a computer shop install for you. This drive is made by a company named Top-G(Top Glory). This is my second one and haven't had any trouble out of either one. They both came with the newest version of Nero CD mastering software. I would highly recommend this drive to anyone.