At this point, we will check the drive's ability to read and backup protected CDs.

- AudioCD protections

For the test procedure we used three audio discs with different audio copy protections. The ripping process on all protected Audio discs was carried out with Exact Audio Copy v0.9 beta5.

The protected Audio discs tested, were:

Audio Discs	Protection
Celine Dion - New Day Has Come	Sony's Key2Audio
Natalie Imbruglia - White Lilies Island	Cactus Data Shield 200
Aiko Katsukino - The Love Letter	Cactus Data Shield 200.0.4 - 3.0 build 16a

The Cactus Data Shield 200, contains artificial errors that are not easily bypassed by the reader, while the Key2Audio contains a second session causing problems to readers when trying to read the Table Of Contents (TOC).

The tested tasks are:

- Recognition of the inserted disc (Yes/No).

- Ripping all wav files(with EAC's Burst Mode) to the hard disk through copy&compare function.

- Listening to the produced wav files to detect any possible click/skips.

The drive recognized up to the 12th Audio track in the CDS200 disc,

and with the "Retrieve Native TOC" option removed, the drive recognized the 13th track.

The test results are shown in the following table:

Samsung SH-W163A	Key2Audio	CDS200
	Ripping process completed, EAC reports no problems, Read&Test CRC comparison successful for all tracks.	Cannot rip or playback the contents of this disc

Unfortunately, the drive seems to have some problems with the CDS protection scheme.

- Cactus Data Shield 200.0.4 - 3.0 build 16a (Aiko Katsukino - The Love Letter)

This is a "special" CDS200 build, since it doesn't contain any artificial errors which create problems during the ripping process. Most problems occur when trying to write the ripped wav files, since the produced CD-R disc contains C2 and CU errors! This "problem" is rumored to be connected to specific chipset weaknesses.

Samsung SH-W163A	CDS 200.0.4 - 3.0 build 16a
	Cannot rip or playback the contents of this disc

- Games Protections

To create the image of the various protected titles in the hard disk, we used Alcohol 120% software and the appropriate settings, in accordance with the protection type of the inserted discs. Below you can see the duration of each process as well as the transfer rate in each case.

Good ripping times with all inserted media. The reviewed drive managed to rip the SafeDisc protected media in 7:00mins. Quite good performance as most drives achieve a full rip in around 2:30 hours.

- Writing Tests

The Samsung SH-W163A supports the DAO-RAW writing mode. To check the drive's EFM correction status we used 5 different game titles with different SafeDisc 2 versions, having the latest software patches installed. After making the images of the various titles onto the hard disk, we burned them (at maximum speed) with Alcohol 120% v1.9.2.3105. Two different discs were recorded for each title; one with the "Rectify Sub-Channel Data" enabled and one with the function disabled.

- Quake 4 SafeDisc v4.6

- Fifa 2004 - SafeDisc v3.1x

The drive managed to create working backups of the Fifa 2004 - SafeDisc v3.1x.