detail information

To round off this review we will run some advanced tests on the LG GSA-5163D.

The 'Sheep test":

For this test, we will use the Sheep tests made by Alexander Noé. Why is it called Sheep Test? That is because the symbol 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.

One of our forum moderators, Womble, has written a guide concerning the 'Sheep Test" that could be found here.

In the screenshot below we see that the LG GSA-5163D supports all available write and read features in CloneCD:

The LG GSA-5163D supports DAO-RAW96 recording mode. This means that it can write uncorrected data and subchannel data.

Below are our results from the 'Sheep Tests":

The LG GSA-5163D qualifies as a two sheep writer but can't produce functional backups of Safedisc 2.90 protected discs. This makes the LG an average choice for backing up protected games.

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-5163D did not have any problems with reading the protected audio discs.

DVD-RAM:

The LG GSA-5163D is a so-called Super Multi drive, which means it also supports the DVD-RAM format.

Lets look at the recording side of the DVD-RAM disc and as you can see, there are differences from the other DVD+R/W/R9 DL and DVD-R/W discs.

You could see a very fascinating pattern of darker 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
• 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 in the '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 at the media we are going to use in these tests:

Maxell branded DVD-RAM media certified for 5x. (Thanks to LG Korea for providing it).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unique Disc Identifier : [DVD-RAM:MXL16]
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Disc & Book Type :       [Not Available] - [Not Available] - [DVD-RAM]
Manufacturer Name :      [MXL16]
Supplementary Info :     [Not Specified]
Formatted Capacity :     [2,295,072 Sectors = 4,482.6MB = 4.38GB (4.70GB)]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
** INFO : An Empty Writable Disc Is Recommended For Accurate Results
** INFO : Drive = HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-4163B [FW A101]
** INFO : Write Capabilities = DVD+R DVD+R-DL DVD+RW DVD-R DVD-RW DVD-RAM
** INFO : Disc = [DVD-RAM:MXL16]
** INFO : Write Speeds (Supported By This Drive On This Disc) Listed Below
** INFO : GET PERFORMANCE Write Speed Descriptor(s)
Descriptor #1 =  6925 KBPS ( 5.00x) - [CLV/Non-Pure CAV]
** INFO : MODE SENSE Write Speed Descriptor(s) [Legacy Command]
Descriptor #1 =  6925 KBPS ( 5.00x) - [CLV/Non-Pure CAV]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
** INFO : Hex Dump Of 'Media Code'-Block Listed Below
** INFO : 4-Byte Header Preceding 'Media Code'-Block Discarded
** INFO : Format 00h - Physical Format Information
0000 : 16 0f 04 42 00 03 10 00  00 26 5f 5f 00 00 00 00   ...B.....&__....
0010 : 80 20 00 10 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 22 00 00 00 00   . ........."....
0020 : 10 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00   ................
01f0 : 00 00 00 00 52 0a 00 79  36 36 36 73 34 34 34 1a   ....R..y666s444.
0200 : 1a 00 00 11 22 83 85 88  88 82 85 88 88 81 84 87   ...."...........
0210 : 87 81 84 87 87 0a 0c 0e  0e 0a 0c 0e 0e 09 0b 0d   ................
0220 : 0d 08 0b 0d 0d 4d 58 4c  31 36 0d 20 20 20 20 20   .....MXL16.    
0230 : 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20  20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20                  
0240 : 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20  20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20                  
0250 : 20 20 20 20 20 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00        ...........
0260 : 00 00 00 00 00 01 01 79  04 70 36 36 36 79 80 80   .......y.p666y..
0270 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00   ................
0280 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00   ................
0290 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00   ................
02a0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00   ................
02b0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 7b 0a 00 87   ............{...
02c0 : 39 39 39 82 37 37 37 22  22 00 00 16 2c 00 83 86   999.777""...,...
02d0 : 86 00 83 86 86 02 82 85  85 02 82 85 85 0d 10 12   ................
02e0 : 12 0d 10 12 12 0c 0f 11  11 0c 0f 11 11 7c 01 7d   .............|.}
02f0 : 39 39 39 7c 8a 8a 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00   999|............
0300 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00   ................
0310 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00   ................
0320 : cd 0a 00 a2 46 46 46 a0  44 44 44 29 29 00 00 1b   ....FFF.DDD))...
0330 : 37 08 06 03 03 08 06 03  03 09 07 04 04 09 07 04   7...............
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
[ DVD Identifier - http://DVD.Identifier.CDfreaks.com ]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

But now the interesting part - writing and reading DVD-RAM media.

For those who are not familiar with DVD-RAM would probably think that something went wrong during the write process since the 5x media was written at 2.35x.  But don't worry - that is normal for the DVD-RAM format, the reason for the 'low" speed is that the drive constantly reads back the data after writing it, to verify that it's written correctly. We could call it a 'bullet proof" writing/verifying technique - with no data loss/errors.

Another advantage with DVD-RAM is that the discs can be formatted/erased/written at over 100.000 times before it will/can cause/report any errors. Let's try to read back the disc that we wrote:

As we can see from the pictures above, the disc was read back at 5x using the P-CAV technique.

Since we have no equipment at the present time to perform any quality measuring tests with the DVD-RAM format it will be skipped, but on the other side it should not be necessary since the RAM writer - verifies the written data by default itself.

Overburning:

To test the overburning capabilities of the LG GSA-5163D we used the overburning test in Nero CD/DVD-Speed. According to Nero CD/DVD speed the drive can overburn to about 95 minutes:

Media used is Ritek 99 minutes media. And we also wrote a 94 minute disc in Nero:

Unfortunately, the drive could not write to more than 95 minutes, but what about reading 99 minute discs?

There are no problems reading the 99 minute test disc.

Now, that concludes our LG GSA-5163D review, head on to the last page to read our conclusion…