PleXCombo PX-208TU



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Review: PleXCombo PX-208TU (USB 2.0)
Reviewer: G@M3FR3@K
Provided by: Plextor Japan
Firmware: version 1.00
Production date: July 2002
TLA#: 0000

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A few weeks ago we presented you with a review of an external Plextor drive, the Plextor
PX-W4012TU. Although this drive was a great
external writer, it was too large and heavy to be used as a portable external drive, e.g. for use with a notebook
computer. Now it's time for a review of another external Plextor drive, the PleXCombo PX-208TU (8/8/24-8U).
This external drive is very portable with its weight of only 500 grams (1.1 lbs) and dimensions (Width/Height/Depth) of
only 14cm x 2.2cm x 17cm (without front panel).

Although this Plextor drive is small and light weighted it has
some impressive features on board. The drive combines four drives in one (CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW and DVD-ROM), making it an
ideal drive for all your daily portable needs. The PX-208TU is capable of reaching 24X read, 8X write, 8X re-write and
8X DVD-read speeds using the USB 2.0 interface.

USB 2.0
As the letter 'U' in 'PX-208TU' already suggests and as we already mentioned above, this PleXCombo drive uses the
USB interface, or to be exact, the USB 2.0 interface. USB 2.0 is a new technology that extends the speed of the
peripheral-to-PC connection up to 40 times over existing capabilities. USB 2.0 can reach speeds up to 480 Mb/sec, 40
times faster than USB 1.1.

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In this review we will take a thorough look at this latest external PleXCombo drive and see if it can live up to the
'Plextor standards'. The PleXCombo PX-208TU supports both the USB 1.1 and 2.0 interface but we'll test its performance
mainly using the USB 2.0 interface. Read on to find out what we have to say about this drive...

Test Machine:

For the tests we'll be using the following configuration:

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Hardware:

  • Motherboard: ASUS K7V
  • Processor: AMD Athlon 700Mhz
  • RAM: 256MB (PC133)
  • GFX: ASUS V8200 (GeForce 3 Ti200)
  • Hard Disks: DiamondMax 40GB & 30GB (7200rpm)
  • IDE Controller: PCI UDMA100 Controller
  • USB Controller: NEC USB 2.0 Controller

System set-up:

System set-up

As you can see the PleXCombo PX-208TU was hooked up to the NEC USB 2.0 Controller and identifies itself as "PLEXTOR
CD-R PX-208T". Autorun was disabled for every device. All other drives support UDMA33.

Used Software:

The Windows XP Professional operating system is installed on our test machine. We'll be using the following software
to perform the various tests:

On the next page we'll take a look at the package of the PleXCombo PX-208TU...


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