History (1999): First CD-RW/DVD-ROM Drive

Samsung was the first to demonstrate, at the most recent CeBIT, what seems to be a particularly attractive product, a DVD-ROM drive able to write CD-R and CD-RW media. We’ve heard nothing more from it since.

Toshiba, then, is the first to put the hybrid unit on the market.

The SDR 1002 reads DVD-ROMs at a speed of 4X, and CD-ROMs at 24X, with CD-R and CD-RW at 4X. The drive is offered with an Ultra DMA 33 interface and 2MB of cache memory. Access time is 105-110ms for CDs, 140-160ms for DVDs.

As of this month, it is already in production. In October, a full kit with hardware and software will be offered for $400. This price may seem high, but it’s just a starting point, and Toshiba is taking full advantage of its unique presence in this technology to set its sights high. Eventually, with the help of some healthy competition, we can expect to see prices subsequently cut in half, and, why not, integrated directly in a PC, since it will allow for the replacement of both a DVD-ROM drive and floppy diskette drive (for interchangeability reasons), with additionally the capability of CD-R and erasable CD engraving, something that will no doubt delight the hordes of PC users who will no longer need a multitude of storage devices (tape, removable disk drives, etc.), but can instead turn to a single combo unit and an internal HDD.

Even if you want to copy a CD, it will no longer be necessary to have an additional CD-ROM drive. All you have to do is copy the CD onto the HDD, then transfer the data to a writable CD, already recommended practice for making multiple copies of the same CD.

The next stage will be that of DVD-RAM combined with CD+RW, but we’ll have to wait, not only to see which of the 2 erasable products will come out on top, but also for a huge drop in prices, not only by half, but to less than one tenth of the current cost.

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 140 on September 1999 from the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter.