Data Tests

Test Method:
We used CD WinBench 99 v1.1, CD Speed 99 v0.6 and SCSI Mechanic v2.1h (evaluation version) to run the data tests. All tests (except the WinBench one) were done using identical recordable media (Mitsui).

For comparison purposes we present in the following figures of test results for this drive against results obtained from widely available drives of similar performance of our CDR arsenal.

CD WinBench 99 v1.1 results:

CD Speed results:
- Speed : Bigger is better
- Seek Times : less is better
- CPU Usage : less is better

Verdict of Data Tests:
The PleXWriter PX-124TS performs quite good as a reader. The average transfer rate is 3.5Mb/s and the maximum is 6.2MB/s. It's seek time (149ms) stays within its specifications and is considered quite good for a CDR-W drive but might prove inadequate if you throw in CDs with many tiny files. It's reading speed when dealing with CD-RW disks ranges from 9x to 21x with an average of 15x! Isn't this amazing? Even the Plextor 40x CD-ROM can read the same disk only at 8x (most drives in the market reach utmost 4x!) The improvement of Plextor in this field is outstanding!

Concerning the CPU usage, it's quite good for a SCSI device. Like every other Plextor CD-ROMs and CD-RW drives, the Retry Count is a little high (10), and this may cause problems when dealing with scratchy CDs. Finally, the Plextor PX-124TS can read in RAW mode, which means that it can be used along with CloneCD as a reader.