YAMAHA CRW-F1 IDE CDR-W - Page 10

Mt. Rainier Tests

For testing the Mt. Rainier performance of YAMAHA CRW-F1, we performed two types of tests. The software we used was InCD by Ahead Software.

First Test

After the format process, we immediately start the recording process (drag & drop). When the drive finishes, we start the reading process back to the HD. At this mode, the drive writes, reads the quality of the written data and background formats the disc at the same time. For the YAMAHA CRW-F1 we used both 10X HS-RW media and the Ultra Speed 24X HS-RW. The recording performance of each drive is displayed in the below table:

YAMAHA CRW-F1 gave a 3.08X average writing speed, slower than the Teac CD-W540E and TDK Cyclone 401248B. In the reading part, the drive was the fastest with 8.33X and the TDK drive follows closely. With the 24X media, the YAMAHA drive was faster in the writing part with 4.86X.

Second Test

At the second test, we left the drive alone to complete the background formatting and afterwards, we repeated the above tests. The recording/reading performance in this case is higher for all the drives, since now only record & read are performed. The disc has been scanned for bad sectors during the format process:

With the 10X HS-RW discs the YAMAHA drive was slower than the TDK in the writing part and faster in the reading test. Mitsumi CR-485C TE gave exactly the same writing performance with YAMAHA. With the 24X HS-RW media the YAMAHA CRW-F1 wrote the file to the disc at 12.4X.

-Easy Write tests

The Philips Easy Write tests checks the quality level of the implementation of Mt Rainier feature. For more info about the testing methodology please refer here

Tests with Blank HS-RW media

Below are the test results for all tested drives with the use of blank HS-RW media

Remarks:

0 = success, any number above shows failure in particular test
N/A = Could not be tested
FE = Fatal Error

The YAMAHA CRW-F1 seems to have some problems with the complete implementation of the Easy Write tests. The drive gave managed to pass only the Basic Command Set and gave a fatal error in the Background Format test. As a result, no further tests could be done. Fatal errors also occurred during the Heavy and Light R&R tests. However, YAMAHA promised that future firmware upgrade will improve this poor performance.

The test with the Philips artificially defected media could not be performed and the drive refused to accept the test scripts. YAMAHA said that this behaviour is under investigation and probably a newer firmware upgrade will fix this. As soon we have this firmware, we will re-test the drive and post the results...