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To round off this review we will run some advanced tests on the LG GSA-4040B. These tests are: making backups of protected data and audio discs as well as an overburning test.

Copy protected data discs:

For this test we will use the new CloneCD 4.3.1.7 version and Blindwrite 4.5.7 for the newest protections, to make a backup of games containing some of the most popular copy protections. In the screenshot below we could see that the LG GSA-4040B supports all available write and read features in CloneCD:

The LG GSA-4040B supports DAO-RAW96 recording mode, which basically means it can write uncorrected data and subchannel data. Below are our results for all the tested games:

Motoracer 3 is protected with Tagé¨s, a protection that uses a very special sub channel protection. So far no drives have been able to backup this game successfully.

Flé¥klypa grand prix is a Norwegian game that is protected with CD Cops, again a very special protection that is added during the manufacturing process. So far no drives have been able to make a 100% working backup, a few drives in combination with a few media types may make a backup that works in a few drives.

Desperados: Wanted dead or alive is protected with Laserlok, a protection that takes very long time to read for most drives, but most drives is able to make working backups of this game.

The Diablo 2 expansion set is protected with SecuROM version 4.62.00 0100, a widely used protection scheme. Writers able to read and write subchannel data correctly should be able to backup this Game.

Grand Theft Auto: Vice city is protected with a newer version of SecuROM: namely version 4.84.69 0071. Very few (if any) writers could reliably make working backups of this protection.

Max Payne is protected with the very popular Safedisc protection; the version used on Max Payne is version 2.30.33. If a writer supports 'Almost correct EFM encoding of regular bit patterns" it will be able to backup this protection without problems. If it does not support this you need to enable the 'Amplify weak sectors" option in CloneCD. This is a software trick to make most writers able to backup most safedisc protected games with weak sectors.

Serious Sam is also protected with the very popular Safedisc protection; the version used on Serious Sam is version 2.51.21. If a writer supports 'Correct EFM encoding of regular bit patterns" it will be able to backup this protection without problems. If it does not support this you need to enable the 'Amplify weak sectors" option in CloneCD. This is a software trick to make most writers able to backup most safedisc protected games with weak sectors.

Command and Conquer: Generals is another game protected with the very popular Safedisc protection, the version used on Command and Conquer: Generals is version 2.80.10. If a writer supports 'Correct EFM encoding of regular bit patterns" it may be able to backup this protection without problems. If it does not support this you need to enable the 'Amplify weak sectors" option in CloneCD. This is a software trick to make most writers able to backup most safedisc protected games with weak sectors. Note that some writers may still have problems with this version.

The protection on The Sims: Superstar expansion pack is also safedisc protected, this time it's version 2.90.40. Very few (if any) writers are able to reliably make a working backup of this protection. . If a writer supports 'Correct EFM encoding of regular bit patterns" it may be able to backup this protection without problems. If it does not support this you need to enable the 'Amplify weak sectors" option in CloneCD. This is a software trick to make most writers able to backup most safedisc protected games with weak sectors. Note that some writers may still have problems with this version.

The table below shows the backup capabilities of the LG GSA-4040B writer:

*The drive creates more read errors than there should be when reading, this may make it impossible to install the game from the backup disc.

Settings for Blindwrite; Enhance Weak sectors and autoplay is disabled.
Settings for CloneCD: Read subchannel data and write them uncorrected. Fast Error Skip: enabled. Intelligent bad sector scanner: enabled and set to 100-error skip. First we tried to write with AWS(Amplify Weak S ectors) disabled, if that did not work we wrote again with AWS enabled.

We thought the new CloneCD 4.3.1.7 was supposed to fix the safedisc 2.8 And safedisc 2.9 issues, but it appears not as the drive was unable to make working backups of these discs, yes even when we used another reader to read the image (due to the extra read errors the LG GSA-4040B creates). Anyway we can't recommend this drive as a reader since it creates more errors than there should be on many of the discs while reading, but for writing it's quite good as it supports 'Correct EFM encoding of regular bit-patterns" and thus is able to make working backups of all current safedisc proteced discs without the need of any software tricks.

Copy protected Audio:

For our protected audio test we used the Exact Audio Copy program. We inserted the protected audio discs and if the drive was able to recognize the disc we tried to extract the music tracks to the hard drive. First let us look at the discs we had available for this test:

Westlife: World of our own is protected with Cactus data shield 100.

Natalie Imbruglias White lilies Island. This disc is protected with Cactus datashield 200

Shakira: Laundry service, which is protected with Key2Audio version 2.

And finally Celine Dion: A new day has come, that is protected with key2audio version 3

Results:

The LG GSA-4040B performed quite well and did not encounter any problems at all while reading the protected discs.

Overburning:

To test the overburning capabilities of the LG GSA-4040B we used the overburning test in Nero CD/DVD-Speed. When trying to with CD-Speed set to 99min we got this error message:

We experimented for a while and found the limit to be around 94 minutes for overburning with this drive:

We did of course try to write 99minutes in Nero, but it just gave back the Block address out of range error. But overburning up to 94 minutes seems to work:

We did also use K-Probe to measure the quality of the written disc:

Sure enough the quality of the written disc was not very good, actually it's among the worst results we have seen.

To try if it was able to read 99 minutes discs we used a 99min disc written by another drive:

Even if the drive had problems writing more than 94 minutes it had no problems whatsoever to read up to 99 minutes, this leads us to think that a firmware upgrade may fix the writing problem.

Now, that concludes our LG GSA-4040B review, head on to the last page to read our conclusion…