Aopen vs Toshiba - Page 3

Transfer Rate Reading Tests

In order to confirm the specifications for all drives with CD reading, we used one CD pressed media, a copy made on CD-R and HS-RW media. The results are illustrated in the following graphs.

- CD Format

The CD reading speeds for the AOpen and Toshiba drives were similar. Toshiba reached a slightly higher speed but the AOpen had better seek times.

- DVD Format

We repeated the same tests with DVD media this time.

All drives reported similar speeds. Any differences can be considered as negligible.

The following DVD is a PTP DVD-ROM where the two layers of disc are read sequentially with the drive starting reading from the inner part of the disc, which is the beginning of each layer, progressing towards the outer range for each layer.

The AOpen and Asus drives were a good deal faster with double layer media. Their performance is similar and this might be as a result of the same chipset being used on both drives. The Toshiba and Samsung drives also use the same chipset between them and respectively showed similar performance.

The graph shown below indicates the reading performance of the five drives with OTP dual layer media. The first layer of an OTP dual layer DVD-ROM is read exactly the same way as the first layer of the PTP disc we tested previously. The difference here is the reading strategy of the second layer of the disc. The beginning of the second layer is located in the outer part of the disc, so the drive starts reading from the outer tracks progressing towards the inner part of the disc.

As in the previous case, the AOpen and Asus drives were again the fastest and by a sizeable margin.

The two following graphs include the reading performance with recordable and rewritable media, where again the Aopen and Toshiba drives proved to be the fastest, accompanied not too far behind by the LiteOn.

Once again, AOpen and Asus lead the race with LiteOn in close pursuit.

We ripped the contents of a pressed Double Layer movie to the hard disk with each drive. The results are summarized below:

The highest ripping speeds belong to the AOpen and the Asus drives.

The Toshiba drive, as well as the Samsung, are the only drives that support DVD-RAM reading, a feature that distinguishes them from the other three:

DVD-RAM reading graph for Toshiba SD-M1912

-Appendix Nero CD-DVD Speed Graphs

AOpen

• CD Pressed / CD-R / US-RW
• DVD Pressed SL / DVD Pressed DL PTP / DVD Pressed DL OTP / DVD-R / DVD-RW / DVD+R / DVD+RW

Toshiba

• CD Pressed / CD-R / US-RW
• DVD Pressed SL / DVD Pressed DL PTP / DVD Pressed DL OTP / DVD-R / DVD-RW / DVD+R / DVD+RW / DVD-RAM