A few months ago there was a thread about the best medium for storing the huge megabytes of 3D files that we all seem to amass. A lot of people were in favour of CD writers, but I was a little bit anti, because of the high failure rate I'd experienced with my CD writer. Instead I kept all my stuff on zip disks. Well, I've changed my mind. I finally bit the bullet, chucked my HP CD writer in the bin (metaphorically at least) and bought myself a brand spanking new Mitsumi CDRW drive with a USB interface. It's terrific. It's fast and so far works every time. Also, by opting for the compressed packet format I can get 1.28MB on each CD. It also does CDRWs as well though I haven't tried that yet. The USB interface is terrific because I already had 4 IDE drives and didn't want to have to buy a SCSI card, a) because of the expense, b) because of compatibility problems with all the other hardware I've got hanging off my machine and c) because I was running out of slots to put cards in. I'd better add that I'm in no way connected with Mitsumi, in fact I'd never heard of them a fortnight ago. One downside is the documentation. Firstly it says that the serial number is in the manual or on the recorder. Wrong! - it's on the flimsy paper wrapper that the installation CD comes in. Secondly, it seems to have been translated from Japanese to German to English and then to the other languages and some things go wrong. But I'll forgive them that.