Memorex MRX-525GE detail information

To round off this review, we will run some advanced tests on the Memorex MRX-525GE.

DVD-RAM:

The Memorex MRX-525GE is a so-called Multi DVD Drive; meaning is also 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.

On the data side, we can see a very fascinating pattern of lighter 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, and 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.

Lets us take a look how the drive performs:

Maxell branded 12x media manufactured by Maxell.
Thanks to ExtremeMhz for providing this media.

Writing Maxell 12x without verification

Writing Maxell 12x with verification

Transfer Rate test

As we see, the Memorex MRX-525GE writes 12X DVD-RAM without any problem, read back of the disc at 12X speed is at 5:36 minutes.

Maxell branded 5x media manufactured by Maxell.
Thanks to Maxell USA for providing this media.

Writing Maxell 5x without verification

Writing Maxell 5x with verification

Transfer Rate test

As we can see, the Memorex MRX-525GE writes 5x DVD-RAM without any problem, read back the disc at 5x speed in 11:44 minutes.

For those of you who are not familiar with DVD-RAM, you may probably think that something went wrong during the write process with the verification turned on, since the 3x and 5x media was written at 1.3x and 2x, respectively. But don’t worry, that is pretty normal for DVD-RAM discs. The reason for the lower writing speed is, the drive constantly reads back the data after writing it to verify that it’s written correctly. We can also call it a “bullet proof” writing/verify technique, with no data loss/errors.

The “Sheep Test”:

For this test, we will use the Sheep tests made by Alexander Noé. Why is it called sheep test? That’s because the logo 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 can be found here.

In the screenshot below taken from CloneCD, we see the Memorex MRX-525GE supports everything.

We created our “Sheep Test” disc according to “Womble’s” instructions; using the copy method, our results follow.

As we can see from the table the Memorex MRX-525GE is a “Two Sheep Burner”,  however failed to write the SD290 and Sheep3 tests.

DVD+R DL/-R DL Writing performance and compatibility

Conclusion