CDR Tests - Page 1

- Procedure

We tested all five drives with latest version of Nero/CloneCD. We used various media for our tests: Mitsubishi Chemicals 80min 40x certified, Mitsui 80min 32x/40x certified, Prodisc 80min 32x certified, Taiyo Yuden 74/80min 24/32x/40x certified. We burned CDs at almost all recording speeds from 16x up to 40x using the SAME amount of data for all drives. The posted recording times are the best we had from our test results. Using other media can increase the final burning time.

- Comparison

Before starting the recording tests, let's see how three Zone-CLV drives are compared in the writing/rotation speeds:

The above chart displays the different approaches towards the 40x Zone-CLV recording strategy. All three drives start writing at 20x, and shift at 24x in the same time, however CyberDrive drops lower its writing speed. The CyberDrive continues to shift writing speeds with the minimum drop of recording speed, and the recording tests confirm the results. The Mitsumi CR-485C reaches the 40x recording speed later than the rest two drives so it is expected to have the highest recording speeds. The WAITEC drive does reach the 40x earlier than the two other drives, however in all the shifting positions the drive lowers enough its recording speed.

All drives have the same rotation speeds in the beginning. The CyberDrive keeps its rotation speeds higher than the competition in order to achieve higher recording speeds.

- 74min CD-R Tests

We created a "DataCD" job with data slightly more than 74mins (74:03:65). We burned the same job with all five tested drives. The faster drive at the 16x writing test comes from CyberDrive. The drive doesn't write exactly at 16X but at 16.32X producing a lower recording time. The drive needs 296secs to finish. The second best drive comes from TDK with 304secs and the slowest drive is Samsung SW-240B with 315secs:

The faster recorder at the 20x writing speed comes again from CyberDrive with 244secs while the TDK needs 252secs. Note that the Waitec, Mitsumi, Samsung and LG drives do not support the 20X writing speed.

CyberDrive CW078D has the lowest recording times for the 24x recording speed. Its difference between other competitors is around 11secs and ends the task at 213secs. The LG GCE-8400B comes second with 221secs. Remember that CyberDrive is a Z-CLV and the LG a P-CAV drive. The TEAC and TDK drives have the same performances with 222secs, WAITEC needs 227secs and Mitsumi CR-485C 238secs.

At the 32x writing speed the faster drive comes from LG, as expected. P-CAV is faster than Zone-CLV but only by one second. The CyberDrive comes second with 184secs. The slowest drive comes from Mitsumi with 221secs. The difference between the first the last drive is 38secs.

At the maximum writing speed of 40x, CyberDrive CW078D ends first with 2:56mins. Although the CW078D has only a 31.68X average writing speed, it overpasses the LG drive. The LG drive needs 2:59mins. The third faster drive comes from TDK with 3:09mins. The Mitsumi CR-485C comes last with 3:27mins.

Below is the screenshot of CyberDrive and LG drives of writing a full 74 disc in less than 3 minutes!