detail information

To round off this review, we will run some advanced tests on the ASUS DRW-1608P3S.

DVD-RAM:

The ASUS DRW-1608P3S is a so-called Multi DVD Burner, meaning is also supports writing and reading the DVD-RAM format. Lets us look at the recording side of the disc, and as you can see it has differences from the other DVD+R/W/R9 DL and DVD-R/W discs.

On the data side, we can see a very fascinating pattern of lighter spots, supposedly these spots are used for calibration while writing and reading.

A DVD-RAM's disc can be formatted in the following formats: FAT32, UDF 1.02, UDF 1.50, UDF 2.00, UDF 2.01, and UDF 2.50.

By formatting a DVD-RAM disc with FAT32 it will act like a removable hard drive and all writing will be done as 'background processes". Meaning you do not have to wait for it to finish, you can start or work with other applications while the DVD-RAM is working without noticing any 'hangs" or CPU slowdowns.

Lets us take a look how the drive performs:

Maxell branded 5x media manufactured by Maxell.
Thanks to Maxell USA for providing this media.

Writing Maxell 5x without verification

Writing Maxell 5x with verification

Transfer Rate test

As we can see, the ASUS DRW-1608P3S writes 5x DVD-RAM without any problem, read back the disc at 5x speed nicely and ScanDisc shows excellent quality.

We will now run a disc quality scan on our burned media using the Lite-On SHM-165P6S and Nero CD-DVD Speed version 4.51.1. We would like to mention that this test should not be necessary under normal use of DVD-RAM media, as the drive will automatically check the disc for errors as it writes.

Panasonic branded 3x media manufactured by Matsushita.
Thanks to Sony USA for providing this media.

Writing Panasonic 3x without verification

Writing Panasonic 3x with verification

Transfer Rate test

No problem with writing 3x DVD-RAM. The drive read back the disc at 5x speed and ScanDisc shows excellent quality.

We will now run a disc quality scan on our burned media using the Lite-On SHM-165P6S and Nero CD-DVD Speed version 4.51.1. We would like to mention that this test should not be necessary under normal use of DVD-RAM media, as the drive will automatically check the disc for errors as it writes.

For those of you who are not familiar with DVD-RAM, you may probably think that something went wrong during the write process with the verification turned on, since the 3x and 5x media was written at 1.3x and 2x, respectively. But don't worry, that is pretty normal for DVD-RAM discs. The reason for the lower writing speed is, the drive constantly reads back the data after writing it to verify that it's written correctly. We can also call it a 'bullet proof" writing/verify technique, with no data loss/errors.

The 'Sheep Test":

For this test, we will use the Sheep tests made by Alexander Noé. Why is it called sheep test? That's because the logo of the first 1 to 1 copy program called CloneCD is a sheep. When looking at supported writers, you will notice that the feature list has sheep to indicate if a feature is supported or not. In this case we are interested in the writer's ability to backup/write weak sectors. Also called: 'Correct EFM encoding of regular bit-patterns."

• No sheep: Can't backup any Safedisc 2 versions without the help of software tricks

• 1 Sheep: Can backup Safedisc 2 up to version 2.4x without software tricks

• 2 Sheep: Can backup Safedisc 2, including version 2.5x

• 3 Sheep: Can write all possible weak sectors, few if any writers could do this.