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| Posted by | Tor Magne |
| Posted on | 11/01/04 21:52 |
| Number of views | 9355 |
Reading performance:
For these tests we will use Nero CD/DVD-Speed to read various CD and DVD's, including audio discs and DVD-media. As already mentioned in the introduction this drive sports a specified read speed of 12X for DVD's and 40X for CD's. Most competitors only offers a 32X reading speed and thus gives this drive an advantage.
Pressed discs:
For this test we used a pressed CD-ROM disc containing PlexTools v1.08 that is exactly 74 minutes long. Below you will see the produced result:
The drive reached its rated speed of 40X at the end and the average read speed is 30.66X. We compare it to other DVD-Writers in the table found below:
| Pressed | Average | Start | End | Seek | Seek | Seek |
| Plextor | 31.40x | 18.48x | 41.45x | 98ms | 116ms | 175ms |
| Sanyo | 29.30x | 16.33x | 38.71x | 85ms | 102ms | 177ms |
| Memorex | 24.82x | 15.10x | 32.70x | 120ms | 140ms | 275ms |
| LG | 24.57x | 14.68x | 32.24x | 101ms | 125ms | 183ms |
| Lite-On | 30.66x | 18.38x | 40.20x | 93ms | 118ms | 180ms |
| Mediagear / | 31.98x | 19.09x | 41.88x | 92ms | 105ms | 164ms |
The drive did very well and is the fastest drive of them all, it do also have some of the best seek times.
CD-Recordable Discs:
For this test we made a copy of the original PlexTools v1.08 CD. The disc we used was a Verbatim 48X certified CD-R disc manufactured by Mitsubishi Chemicals corporation.
Nothing changes here and the result is about identical to reading the pressed disc. The usual comparison table is found below.
| CD-R | Average | Start | End | Seek | Seek | Seek |
| Plextor | 31.48x | 18.83x | 41.37x | 95ms | 111ms | 164ms |
| Sanyo | 30.31x | 16.20x | 39.92x | 114ms | 115ms | 204ms |
| Memorex | 25.48x | 14.60x | 33.79x | 125ms | 145ms | 289ms |
| LG | 24.57x | 14.68x | 32.32x | 100ms | 137ms | 201ms |
| Lite-On | 30.72x | 18.41x | 40.38x | 105ms | 135ms | 207ms |
| Mediagear / | 32.14x | 19.21x | 42.26x | 89ms | 93ms | 159ms |
Simply outstanding as it was able to beat all the other drives for both speed and seek times.
CD-ReWritable discs:
Again we made a copy of the original PlexTools v1.08 disc, this time we used a Verbatim High Speed (10X) CD-RW disc made by Mitsubishi Chemicals Corporation.
The drive is locked at 32X reading speed for CD-RW discs; look below to see how this compares to other drives:
| CD-RW | Average | Start | End | Seek | Seek | Seek |
| Plextor | 31.46x | 18.47x | 41.55x | 109ms | 116ms | 183ms |
| Sanyo | 30.59x | 16.97x | 40.44x | 84ms | 103ms | 175ms |
| Memorex | 25.48x | 14.65x | 33.79x | 130ms | 151ms | 293ms |
| LG | 18.77x | 11.02x | 24.85x | 100ms | 133ms | 203ms |
| Lite-On | 25.32x | 14.93x | 33.43x | 105ms | 132ms | 206ms |
| Mediagear / | 26.67x | 15.68x | 35.21x | 93ms | 102ms | 166ms |
The seek times are among the best, but it's not the fastest drive due to the lower read speed of only 32X.
Audio - Digital Audio Extraction:
To test the digital audio extraction performance of the Mediagear we again used Nero CD/DVD-Speed to measure the transfer rate. The audio disc we used is slightly larger than the disc used for the other tests, to be exact it's about 78 minutes long (77:56:58).
The drive aimed at reading the disc at 40x, but the speed got limited at the end of the disc for a reason or another. It may be the USB 2.0 interface that causes this but we have hard times believing this as there is no problems transferring much more data than this as the DVD-reading test will show.
| Audio | Average | Start | End | Seek | Seek | Seek |
| Plextor | 31.84x | 18.90x | 41.98x | 97ms | 117ms | 181ms |
| Sanyo | 30.72x | 18.24x | 40.21x | 84ms | 103ms | 208ms |
| Memorex | 25.24x | 14.90x | 33.29x | 122ms | 148ms | 299ms |
| LG | 18.60x | 10.95x | 24.50x | 98ms | 131ms | 227ms |
| Lite-On | 31.23x | 18.47x | 41.18x | 92ms | 110ms | 188ms |
| Mediagear / | 31.78x | 19.22x | 38.80x | 89ms | 106ms | 161ms |
Again it was able to outperform all drives of the same generation, only lagging behind the next generation drive; the Plextor PX-708A. Seek times is still among the best.
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We had a few 'problems" with EAC in combination with this drive. But were able to solve them both, here are the problems and how we solved them:
Problem 1: EAC do not recognize USB drives, EAC may use the Adaptec ASPI layer if it's installed and the Adaptec ASPI layer do not support USB devices.
Solution: Copy the Nero ASPI layer (filename: wnaspi32.dll) from your Nero folder or download it from Ahead, copy it into the same folder where EAC is located, EAC will now use this ASPI layer and will recognize the USB devices.
Problem 2: We had some initial problems where the drive would fail on all tracks - Giving back a timing error and not extracting anything in Burst mode. In secure mode it would extract but not without getting some timing errors on each track.
Solution: Go on the EAC menu: Drive options é Drive é and set drive read command to 'Read command MMC 1". Now it should work, at least it worked in our case.
Below is the results produced by EAC:
Burst mode
Secure mode
The drive performed as expected in the burst mode test and got an average speed of 28.2x, but in the secure mode test it came out as one of the slowest drives we have tested with an average speed of only 6.2X
Advanced audio - DAE quality test:
Before we move on to testing DVD read speeds we will take a last audio test, this time we used the 'Advanced DAE Quality Test" feature in CD-Speed.
Even though there was some data errors the drive still qualify for a perfect 100.0 score according to CD-Speed. Else it seems good, except that it's not able to read data from the lead-in and lead-out.
But now it's time to continue with DVD Reading performance on the next page...
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