The specifications of LG GBW-H10N state that the drive is able to write CD-R at 8x and CD-RW discs at 10x. Let us find out how the drive really performs in speed and quality.

Writing Quality with CD-R discs:

For our data writing tests, we simply set up a new compilation of about 700Mb using Nero Burning ROM 7 software. Writing method used is DAO (Disc At Once), and the disc is set up as a non-multisession disc with “finalize disc” enabled. The screenshot below shows how long it takes to write a disc at the highest speed (8x):

The drive took a lengthy 10 minutes and 41 seconds to write the disc at 8x. But let’s see how the writing quality is in our tests below.

Write Quality:

We will test CD-R discs from different CD-R manufacturers. To really measure the write speed, we used the “create data CD” function in Nero CD-DVD Speed. The discs were written at the maximum speed that the drive supports. For the quality test, we used K-Probe 2 which is a tool developed by a Lite-On employee. It runs under Windows and works with drives made by Lite-On. Also note that different drives and different reading speeds may affect the results obtained when scanning the discs. We used a Lite-On LTR-40125S drive with firmware ZS0R and scanned the discs at 48X speed.

A written CD-R disc will always have some C1 errors; C1 errors are easily corrected by the drive’s error correction capabilities. The next level of errors is C2, while C2 errors could also be corrected by most drive’s error correction capabilities; they are not wanted on a good quality disc. A good disc should not contain any C2 errors, and preferably have an average C1 error amount of below 2.0 for the best quality discs, or at least below 10.0 C1 average for good quality discs. After C2 errors, there are only un-correctable errors that will make a disc unusable.

In short, our analysis will be based on these guideline to determine the quality of the burned disc:

CD-R/RW quality scan guideline

And below are the obtained results:

Verbatim DataLifePlus CD-R media with its average C1 errors of 1.52 goes in the “best quality discs” category.

Verbatim media – manufactured by CMC Magnetics Corporation with its average C1 errors of 1.29 goes in the “best quality discs” category.

Media made by Taiyo Yuden have always had a good reputation and with the average C1 errors of 0.24 it goes into the group “best quality discs” category.

This Memorex media goes into the category “best quality discs” for its C1 average of 0.45.

Maxell CD-R made by Prodisc goes into the category “best quality discs” for its C1 average of 0.97.

Sony CD-R goes into the category “best quality discs” for its C1 average of 1.67.

Writing Quality with CD-RW discs:

Settings and testing procedures is the same as used earlier in this review, so you may want to go back and read them if you are unsure. All discs used for these tests are new and have not been written to before.

Very high C1 errors.

C1 errors are high and C2 exists. Nevertheless, this media produces high C1 and C2 errors on many drives.

But it’s a DVD/Blu-ray writer, so head on to next page and read about DVD-Writing performance and DVD media compatibility…

Reading Performances

DVD+R/RW Writing Performance