Samsung unveils speedier combo drive

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By Martyn Williams

(IDG) -- Samsung Electronics unveiled Thursday a speedy new optical disc drive that should mean users spend less time waiting for data to be read from or written to optical discs.

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The SM-332 drive, which was announced at the CeBIT electronics show in Hanover, Germany, is capable of writing CDs at 32X normal speed, or 4.8MB per second.

This means the drive is capable of completely writing a 650MB CD in around three minutes, the company says.

The drive can rewrite discs at 10X normal speed, or 1.5MB per second, and features a fast read speed of 40X normal, or 6MB per second, for CDs, and 12X normal, or 16.2MB per second, for DVDs.

This combination of speeds makes the drive one of the fastest CD/DVD combo drives yet announced by any manufacturer.

The drive also supports Mount Rainier technology, according to Samsung. Promoted by Compaq Computer, Microsoft, Koninklijke Philips Electronics, and Sony, the technology adds support for data storage on CD-RW into the operating system and is intended to make using rewritable optical discs more like using floppies.

The system is built into the Windows XP operating system.