DVD-RAM writing performance:

The Lite-On LH-20A1L is a so-called Multi drive, meaning it also supports the DVD-RAM format.

This drive is one of few drives that also supports 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. Let’s try to read back the 2 discs that we wrote:

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

Maxell 12x rated DVD-RAM media

As we can see, the Lite-On LH-20A1L wrote our 12x DVD-RAM media at its maximum rated speed of 12x in 6 minutes and 27 seconds.

Now let’s see if the Lite-On LH-20A1L can read our test disc.

The Lite-On LH-20A1L had a few problems in reading our test disc at 12x.

Summary:

Although the Lite-On LH-20A1L had a slight problem in reading back our test disc, this should not cause to much concern. When using 12x media the drive completed a full disc in 6 minutes and 27 seconds, which should be fast enough for every day backups.

Now let’s head to the final page where we will check out LightScribe….

DVD+R DL/-R DL Writing performance

LightScribe