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The Memorex Dual-X supports 10X(1500kb/s) CD-RW re-writing, 2,4X (3.312Kb/s) DVD+RW re-writing and 2X (2.760Kb/s) DVD-RW re-writing. On this page of our review we'll see what these speeds mean when writing normal data compilations and when usin the packet writing method.

Re-Writing data:

For this test we set up a new compilation containing 647Mb of data in Nero Burning ROM. We used the DAO (Disc At Once) writing method. In the screenshot below you can see the burn process completed successfully.  

The Memorex Dual X used 7 minutes and 45 seconds for writing the discs, this places it between the plextor PX-504A (7minutes and 44 seconds) and the Sanyo CRD-BPDV2 (8 minutes and 7 seconds). For the next DVD+RW and DVD-RW test we again used Nero Burning ROM to set up a DVD-ROM compilation containing 4477Mb of data, we wrote the disc with DAO (Disc At Once) writing method:

DVD+RW

DVD-RW

To write DVD+RW the drive used 23 minutes and 6 seconds, compared to the Sanyo CRD-BPDV2 (wrote the disc in 23m 53s) this is a bit faster. For writing the DVD-RW disc it needed 38 minutes and 51 seconds, notice that this is not including the time to format the disc.

Packet writing:

For the packet rewriting test we used Aheads InCD program to measure the time for formatting the disc and for writing 400Mb of data to the CD-RW disc and 4,35Gb of data to the DVD+RW disc and the DVD-RW disc

CD-RW packet writing performance:

Compared to the Plextor PX-504A the drive formatted the disc faster but was clearly beaten by the plextor on the copying part.

But when trying to examine the packet writing performance for DVD+RW and DVD-RW discs we ran into huge problems:

DVD+RW:

 Every time we tried to format a DVD+RW disc we got this error message. We tried to erase the media, new unused media and media of other brands but it did not make any difference. Notice that we did not have any problems at all when using the exact same version of InCD and the same discs in another DVD-Writer.

DVD-RW:

This time everything seemed to work ok, and formatting the disc took 35 minutes and 12 seconds, a quick format of the disc took only 9 seconds. But when trying to copy a folder containing 4,35Gb of data(MP3 files) we ran into problems again: 

We tried with another new disc and got the same result, again using another DVD-Writer cured the problems.

We are still unsure if it's an issue with the drive or a compatibility issue with Ahead InCD that caused the problems. A firmware update and/or an InCD update will most likely fix these problems.

But for now we can't recommend this drive for packet writing, at least not if you are using Aheads InCD program, other programs may work better.

Update 5.5.2004: Ahead has informed us that updating to the latest firmware (version 1.07) for the Memorex dual-x along with updating InCD to the latest version should solve this problem.

Before we round off this review, let us run the drive through some advanced tests at next page…