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To round off this review, we will run some advanced tests on the Mad Dog MD-16XDVD9-8X. These tests are: 'Sheep Test" and the drives Over-burning capabilities.

Copy protected data discs:

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 could be found here.

In the screenshot below taken from CloneCD v5.1.0.0, we see the Mad Dog MD-16XDVD9-8X supports everything.

The Dog MD-16XDVD9-8X supports DAO-RAW96 recording mode, which basically means it can write uncorrected data and subchannel data. The drive used to verify that the tests work is the NEC ND-3500AG with firmware version 2.19. Below are our results from the 'Sheep Tests":

The test shows the Mad Dog MD-16XDVD9-8X qualifies as a 'two sheep" writer.

CD-R Overburning:

To test the overburning capabilities of the Mad Dog MD-16XDVD9-8X, we used the over-burning test in Nero CD/DVD-Speed.

On the simulation the maximum capacity that we could reach is 92:57.74 when testing with an 80 minute Moser Baer CD-R.

*Reviewers note: Setting any longer length resulted in an 'Invalid Field In Parameter List" Error.

We then used Nero CD-DVD Speed over-burn setting to see if we could actually overburn a disc to 92:00.00.

As we can see the disc was created successfully taking 3m:20s to complete however the transfer rated failed making the disc unreadable.

DVD±R Overburning:

To test the over-burning capabilities of the Mad Dog MD-16XDVD9-8X with DVD+R, we used the over-burning test in Nero CD/DVD-Speed.

The test indicates that DVD+R media cannot be over-burned with the Mad Dog MD-16XDVD9-8X.

Now let's try some DVD-R.

The test indicates that DVD-R media cannot be over-burned with the Mad Dog MD-16XDVD9-8X.

We set the over-burn setting in CD-DVD Speed to 4500 MB so we could try actually writing some discs.

DVD+R result.

DVD-R result.

To sum it up:

DVD±R over-burning is not supported on the Mad Dog MD-16XDVD9-8X.

 Now, that concludes our Mad Dog MD-16XDVD9-8X review, head on to the last page to read our conclusion…