RW Writing Tests

We used Nero 5.5.5.4 for writing CDs at the maximum RW speed for all the tested drives. Yamaha supports fully the HS-RW format:

The Yamaha CRW3200E overall performance was very good. The drive gave back the lower recording time (483sec) but the competition is very close. The erase time stays below 60secs and the CPU usage keeps up the level as with competition.

Packet Writing Tests

The Yamaha CRW3200E supports both 10x CLV and 4-10x CAV packet writing options. We used InCD v3.12beta and v3.14 for most of our packet writing tests. The 2 packet-writing modes can be selected within drive's InCD properties tab:

The InCD v3.14 adds support Mt. Rainier format that should be combined with firmware 1.0b for the Yamaha CRW 3200E.

We used a TDK HS-RW media and we formatted it. The formatting procedure takes around 11 minutes. The formatted disc had 534mbs of free space. We copied a 403 MB file (403.147 kbs) from a Hard Disk (on the same PC as the writers) to the formatted RW media using Windows Explorer (we dragged and dropped) and we completed the test twice to eliminate any possible time measurement faults and user errors:

The Yamaha 3200E gave the fastest packet reading performance among the four tested drives. The writing speed is slightly lower than what competition offers but hopefully performance will be upgraded with future firmware updates.