Yamaha CRW4416S Internal SCSI 4X CDR/RW

As Newton made clear in his studies of motion, all things in the universe seem to be resistant to change. As we all grow used to doing things a particular way, any attempt to change our methods of thought, production, or creativity bring about a great deal of resistance.  replacement.Case in point would be the seemingly life-long strife the storage industry has had in the journey for a true replacement for the good ol' (albeit outdated) 1.44MB floppy drive.

Companies like Iomega have tossed their solutions at the market, however a true replacement for the floppy drive can't seem to be brought into acceptation by the market.  The primary reason being that the cost of a single floppy disk is next to nothing, it is at the point where you have no problem lending a friend a floppy disk and not worrying about getting the disk back anytime soon, if at all. On the other hand, very few of us would feel comfortable giving a $15 Zip disk or a $10 LS-120 disk to even the most trustworthy of friends without prior knowledge of when we'd get the disk returned. The reality of the situation is that while virtually everyone can give out floppy disks, there is truly no other medium capable of equaling the floppy disk in terms of cost, and widespread usage. This is a bit of a paradox since the costs of such devices (and media) as the Iomega Zip drive won't drop until the installed user base of the devices increases, a spiraling motion that holds no end, and indicates that there will never be a widely accepted floppy replacement.

Second to floppy drives, the most frequently used form of removable storage happens to be the CD-ROM drive. The beauty of CD-ROM drives is that their discs are both plentiful, and cost efficient as a single disc can be purchased for, often times, less than $1.50 (USD). That would make CD the ideal floppy replacement, an idea which was experimented with early on as the release of recordable CD drives (CDR) first hit the market. Unfortunately, their inability to be written to more than once and their relatively expensive introductory cost kept them out of the hands of even the most storage hungry users. Luckily, with the introduction of the re-writable CD, and the mainstream inclusion of CDR/RW (Recordable/Re-Writeable) drives into the removable storage market, the CD has quickly become one of the most popular means of transporting and storing data. Since almost every computer user has a CD-ROM drive, you can almost be 100% sure that your recorded CD's will be as welcome as a Visa card, even overseas.

Now that you've decided to purchase a CDR/RW drive you might as well go for the, arguably, best on the market, and according to the hundreds of satisfied users that contacted AnandTech, Yamaha fits that description quite well with their latest SCSI writer, the CRW4416S.