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Simultaneous CD/DVD Duplication with Multilane Storage Tower

Various CD/DVD burning applications now have the ability to duplicate multiple CDs and DVDs simultaneously, drastically decreasing the amount of time required to reproduce large quantities of optical media at little cost to implement. The latest versions of the following CD/DVD duplication software titles claim support for copying from a single source media and/or image file onto multiple destination CDs or DVDs.

• Nero Burning Rom
• Easy CD Creator by Roxio
• Droppix
• NewTech InfoSystems (NTI)
• Alcohol 52%
• Padus Disk Juggler Professional

The biggest potential limitation associated with this functionality would be the limited number of available 5.25" drive bays on the desktop case to accommodate a desirable number of optical drives for larger amounts of duplication requirements. Motherboards used in this application must also have many IDE or SATA ports to connect all the optical drives, which may also lead to bloated internal cabling and a higher possibility of configuration difficulties during computer bootup. The installation of optical drives into a desktop computer is an inconvenience, and desktop cases are generally not built for portability.

Storage Tower with 4x Multilane back panel installed

Through testing we have found the Storage Tower with an Infiiniband Multilane connector to be an ideal solution for externally connecting multiple optical drives to be used for simultaneous CD/DVD duplication. Up to four SATA optical drives can be mounted into the Storage Tower to be connected to any computer through a single Infiniband Multilane connector. The 4x Multilane interface features four native SATA channels through a single connection, allowing for absolutely no difference in speed for any of the drives using an interface designed to provide clean and simple cable management. Computers with more than one PCI or PCI-X slot free can even install extra SATA Multilane host controllers, allowing more Storage Towers to be connected onto the same computer to double or triple the media duplication speed.

Things You Will Need

1. CD/DVD Duplication Software

The software titles listed above claim support for copying to multiple optical drives at the same time. We have confirmed Nero 7 Premium to work successfully.

2. SATA Multilane Host Controller

3. Storage Tower with Multilane back panel

4. SATA Multilane Cable

5. Internal 5.25" Optical Drives