CD-R/RW Writing Performance:

The specifications of the Lite-On LH-20A1H state that the drive is able to write CD-R discs at 48x and CD-RW at 32x. Let us find out how the drive really performs in speed and quality.

Writing Data CD-R/RW discs:

For our data writing tests, we simply set up a new compilation of 703Mb using Nero Burning ROM 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 (48x).

CD-R:

The Lite-On LH-20A1H took 2 minutes and 45 seconds to write the disc at 48x. Let us see how this compares to other drives in the table below:

The Lite-On LH-20A1H was one of the fastest drives when writing our test CD-R media.

CD-R Writing Quality

We will test CD-R discs from many different CD-R manufacturers. To really measure the write speed, we used the “create data CD” function in Nero CD-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 SOHR-5239S drive with firmware 2S0B 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 discs, or at least below 10.0 averages for good quality discs. After C2 errors, there are only uncorrectable errors that will make a disc unusable.

Below are our results:

An excellent result from this Verbatim branded Taiyo Yuden CD-R. A C1 average of 0.29 places this media into the “best quality discs” category.

This Ricoh-branded media burned very well, recommended.

As we can see, the C1 average for this disc is 5.42, so a good result from this HP media.

A good result from this Infiniti-branded SKC media.

Again, a good result for this Traxdata branded Ritek media.

An excellent result again with Taiyo Yuden media, this time Miflop branded. Highly recommended.

Overall thoughts:

For the most part, the Lite-On LH-20A1H burns CD-R media with excellent to very good quality.

Now let us check if the CD-RW writing performance matches the CD-R writing performance…

CD-RW Writing Quality

For these tests we will be using 3 different CD-RW media from 2 different manufacturers.

To really measure the write speed, we used the 'create data CD" function in Nero CD-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 our review drive and scanned the discs at 48X speed.

A written CD-RW 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 discs, or at least below 10.0 averages for good quality discs. After C2 errors, there are only un-correctable errors that will make a disc unusable.

A good result from this media.

A very good result, however this is probably due to the 10x CLV write speed, which was all the drive would allow us for this media.

An excellent result with this Verbatim media, this time 24x rated.

Overall thoughts:

The CD-RW writing performance of this drive is mostly above average. There are almost no problems when burning well known high quality media. 

Now let's head on to the DVD+R/+RW writing performance...

Reading Performance:

DVD+R/RW Writing Performance: