Are Kenwood TrueSpeed drives reliable?

[AncientPC]

The thought of a cd rom drive matching 72x read speeds throughout an entire CD is pretty overwhelming, but I heard from a friend that the Kenwood TrueSpeed's have a stability problem. Any details on this?

BTW, why do people post one-liner "Bump" messages? To just increase their number of posts?

 

[mastertech01]

Some people bump a message to improve its visibility because the topic is special or interesting..and some like you suggest are neffing for a larger number of posts to achieve some higher status..it means little and can get them bumped off the membership roles if they are too obvious.

To answer your question on the TrueX, I had a bad experience with the 52X IDE version, but I hear that the problems with the earlier drives has been cleared up and the 72X performs very well.. but I havent had a 72X to judge for myself.

 

[damac]

sorry to say but their have been a few issues with this drive and I have had it almost since the beginning cause I thought it was best cause of the 72x.

It has problems copying lots of files over to my hard drive after backups on cdr's that read fine on other cd rom drives in the house.

has trouble reading some cd's that I have wanted to burn

their are a few games that I could literally not play and the makers of the games told me specifically the copy protection schemes had issues with the cd rom and kenwood would have to fix it.

I think their is some stuff the drive doesn't technically do but I don't remember exactly what.

it wouldn't surprise me if the drive does better in benchmark situations but I don't find the real world performance that great compared to other stuff for everyday use. I would say get a good regular cd rom

 

[airfoil]

I have a 72x Kenwood and it flies! No issues with reading CD-R's or CD-RW's at all. The burned CD's, at worst, take a little longer to be accessed, and even this is pretty rare.
In my opinion, its worth a look, but a DVD drive like the Pioneer 16x slot load will be a wiser buy, since it's supposed to read cd's at 40x.
Overall, my Kenwood achieves about 68x on the outer track for pressed cd's, although its a little slower for burned ones.

 

[Yoshi]

There will be people who disagree with me but....

Forget Kenwood TrueX drives...mine had issues reading CDR and CDRW media and after about 13 months of use crapped out. Same problems as the slower versions of the drive. I would not recommend this drive to anyone.

 

[madthumbs]

I have the 72x. It's not noticeably faster than a 24x I had (maybe due to reading problems). I've updated the firmware and tried all the suggestions. It has many read problems. The only advantage this drive has is that it is quiet. I think Kenwood has been screwing it's customers long enough, and I will not buy another Kenwood product at least for a good long time... like at least 10 years.
-Take into account... more people have problems with it than there are happy people with it.

 

[Dhman]

I've had two of them, and had nothing but problems. I got rid of them, and have been happy ever since.

 

[Supergax]

I've had the 72x for over a year now. I've never really had any problems aside from one when it would lock up while copying large amounts of data, which was fixed with a firmware update. The only major problem I've had with it was when I dropped it while transferring it into a new case, had to rma it.

 

[damac]

potential buyers read my post above. These are specific hardware issues that certain game companies are aware of and said it was kenwood's problem, plus the drive can't read certain types of cd's when I try and copy some games so I have to use my burner.

Some may not experience these issues in their limited use but I use my computer allot and this drive is not a smart buy with known issues companies address being the drive. don't be fooled by the 72x tag and thinking its the best.

I MUST use my cd burner for certain games, copying certain media, and reading and copying from certain media. These are issues my 3 year old dell in the other room doesn't have. I'll be it has something to do with their truex technology.

 

[Supergax]

What makes you think that the use of people who have this drive is limited? I play many games myself, I've installed tons of software on my computer, and have used this drive for reading cdr and cdrw discs with no problems, with the newest firmware. Yes, the drive has been buggy, but like I have said before, I have had no real problems with it, even with all the use it has had. Now you may say that well the drive shouldn't need a firmware update every 5 weeks, which is true, but there hasn't been a firmware update since last August, I think they finally have the drives problems straightened out.

I'm not some Kenwood freak, I have their 42x TrueX drive and it's a piece of crap. Yes, you may have problems with this drive, but you also may not, it's a chance one has to take. There are the advantages like the fact that the drive smokes all other cd-rom drives, including things such as ripping audio, in wich I've been able to rip at 32x.

Kenwood was trying to be innovative in the cd-rom industry, and deserves some credit, it's the future of cd and dvd media if we are looking for faster speeds, unlike other solutions like the piece of crap 52x from Creative.

 

[madthumbs]

The 72x does have limited use, users should not have to update firmware out of the box to be able to use it, it can't possibly read at 72X from what I have seen. It's audio extraction may be fast but it's about as bad a quality as you can get. Because of what Kenwood has done to all it's customers forcing them to sue just to get a small compensation for their defective products I say the company should be boycotted and I would love to see them die. I would feel bad for the employees, but what they did to us is suck!

 

[damac]

Thats nice and everything but like I said in your little circle of use you may not notice the problems BUT I know of a few games with specific issues related to the kenwood drive where their tech support told me directly it was due to kenwood drive and they would have to update the firmware. I believe the games were from sierra but don't remember the titles although I could dig them up if somebody wanted.

Also from what I read their are certain types of retail cd rom layouts having to do with copy protection that the kenwood CAN NOT read. I had some problems with copying certain games at home and looked around on the net and found that was a feature that the kenwood simply didn't do like most cd roms so I was forced to use my burner.

For every day use the kenwood functions for the most part true but their are problems they haven't ironed out with their truex technology and that is fact when certain companies who produce cd rom content say so I would assume.

as a matter of fact this thing is going out of my machine so its one less thing to deal with.

 

[MigraineMan]

I have the Kenwood 72x, and after installing it with the new Abit KT7A-RAID, Windows 2000, and the latest Via IDE drivers, CD-ROM performance is rather bad. A key problem is that when you insert a CD, it takes about 15 secs for the drive to recognize it. To be honest, I'm having a similar delay with my Plextor CD-RW, but at least the Plextor allows me to install things. When using the Kenwood to install W2K the first time, it crapped out in the middle of the file copy. The Plextor worked great. Now that I have a W2K installation, the Kenwood actually has problems with some CDs, giving me an error like "This is not a valid Win32 application" error msg when launching an installation, while the Plextor works fine. Both CDs have the same IDE drivers (Via) installed. Both are masters on their IDE channel (1 and 2). They are not on the RAID (where I already have two disks running in RAID-0 mode).

This drive was working fine before on my previous motherboard (the MSI K7T Pro-2A) with Windows 2000, so I'm wondering if the Kenwood has Abit aversions. Anyone heard of this?

Also, what tool do you guys use to measure CD-ROM speed (in terms of x? 52x, 72x, etc.)?

 

[HawkeyeColt]

I had 2 Kenwood 52X.. Both are now in my local landfill. Worst cd-roms I have ever owned.

 

[Venomous]

To the Gentlemen using the 72X in his New KT7A Raid, get rid of your crappy VIA IDE drivers and use the stock Win2k ones.

Owning a Kenwood is a love and hate relationship. I have 3 of them. I had the nasty 52X that died, Kenwood happily replaced with a 62X and to this day, no problems. Had a 72X bite the dust, but was RMA'd and replaced to me in less then a week. Granted, i do live in CA, but thats still impressive. Will i buy anymore? Answer is NO. Toshibas for me here on out.

You take a chance on these drives. If you get a good one, believe me, they are friggen fast as hell. The good ones have no probs reading anything.

If you dont want to hastle with it, get a Toshiba CD rom. Fast and reliable.

As far as using a DVD as your main cd. I look at it like this. Would you use your CD-R or CD+RW as your main CD Reader? There is wear and tear. I much rather destroy a $45 CD rom opposed to a $200 CD-R or $115 DVD player. Besides, DVD drives are slow as hell.

 

[madthumbs]

>>&quot;As far as using a DVD as your main cd. I look at it like this. Would you use your CD-R or CD+RW as your main CD Reader? There is wear and tear. I much rather destroy a $45 CD rom opposed to a $200 CD-R or $115 DVD player. Besides, DVD drives are slow as hell.&quot;<<

How often does wear and tear kill a component while the component is still expensive? Oh... aside from crappy products like a 72x which uses more laser lens and parts and thus is more likely to crap out early. Chances are you get a $200 Cdr, or DVD drive and you will want a new one or be able to replace it for $30 by the time it quits... &quot;if&quot; it does.