The company is promoting it as a fast desktop backup device for important files and data. It's a politically correct promotion, given recent court decisions concerning the pirating of music over the Internet. MP3 file coding and lots of other video and audio performance goodies. Either way The CRW-1232 supports the Enhanced IDE interface and is an internal unit that can be mounted horizontally or vertically, making it compatible with both desktop and minitower configurations. While rewritable DVD technology struggles to maturity, CD-RW technology is at hand at an affordable price.
External drives are more flexible than internal drives.
There is no longer any appreciable performance difference between SCSI and Enhanced IDE optical drives. Good bundled software will make operating your CD-RW drive simple and fun. It has a 4M data buffer for boosting drive performance and offers an access time of about 120 milliseconds. AOpen cited an honest rated time between failures of 50,000 hours, but said its proprietary Optimum Power Control technology will give the unit a higher rating. OPC continuously monitors signal levels during recording and adjusts laser power to compensate when the disk is dirty.