Creative has been around the sound and multimedia world for many years and, with the SoundBlaster range, established the industry standard for sound cards. Creative was amongst the first to introduce CDROM drives to the PC and the original SoundBlaster Pro had a separate connector for a CD drive. The Creative 1220S is the company's latest DVD-RAM drive and connects using the small Adaptec 2902 SCSI interface card and cable supplied with the drive. If you're into SCSI and already have a controller, then you can save a slot on your motherboard.

Once the hardware is installed Windows recognises the drive as an additional CDROM drive, while running the installation software creates another icon on the filing system for removable media. When you use a CD or DVD-ROM in the drive, access is gained through the CD icon. But if you use removable DVD-RAM media then this is accessed through the other icon. DVD-RAM discs need to be formatted in the same way as a large floppy before they can be used, and once you've done this (it's very quick), the drive is then available to the filing system and you can open and save files exactly as you would on a hard drive. Creative's offering is a well-built drive that turned in a good performance at a pretty competitive price.

Company: Creative

Company: LaCie

Contact: 020 7872 8000

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Contact: 01628 585000

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Contact: 0845 600 3535

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Tags: dvd scsi optical disc drive hardware compact disc storage optical high-definition television