Writing performance DVD-RAM:

The Lite-On LH-18A1P 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.

We can see a very fascinating pattern of darker spots. These tick marks are "address information" ("Pre-mastered Pit Header Field") which are embedded onto the disc. This is header information in front of data sector area, and is the same format as HDD and MO.

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 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.

DVD-RAM has error correction, but also has error replacement to spare sectors as a "defect management" function. This gives higher reliability than other DVD format.

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.

Lets us take a look at the media we are going to use in these tests:

Maxell 12x media manufactured by Maxell

Now let’s see how DVD-RAM media is written and read by the Lite-On LH-18A1P:

Maxell 12x at 12x without verification

Maxell 12x at 8x without verification

Maxell 12x at 6x without verification

Let’s try to read back the disc that we wrote:

A Disc Quality scan of the Maxell 12x media

As we can see, the Lite-On LH-18A1P uses a P-CAV reading method, and reads the disc at its rated write speed, meaning our 12x media was read at 12x.

Next you can read the conclusion from our tests… 

Writing performance DVD±R DL

Conclusion