Author’s page:

Introduction:

On this page, the author of the review has the freedom to run tests that she/he thinks will enhance the review. These tests, unlike our standard tests, which we try to keep consistent throughout the whole review team, so that our reviews are as consistent as possible. This page gives the reviewer the opportunity to show some advanced and real world tests that other review team members may not be able to run.

Real World tests:

Real world tests are designed to simulate what normal users might use their drives for in everyday use. For example, writing discs with a burning application.

Nero Burning Rom:

In the following tests, we will burn discs from the main media groups with Nero Burning Rom.

CD-R:

For our data writing tests, we simply set up a new compilation of 703Mb using Nero Burning ROM software. Writing method used is DAO (Disc At Once), and the disc is set up as a non-multisession disc with “finalize disc” enabled. The screenshot below shows how long it takes to write a disc at the highest speed. (48x)

The Optiarc AD-7200A burned our test CD-R at 48x in 3 minutes and 12 seconds.

Let’s compare with other drives in our table below.

The Optiarc AD-7200A was above average when writing our test CD-R.

DVD R:

In this test we will measure the time for writing to DVD R discs. We used Nero Burning Rom to burn an ISO compilation containing 4483Mb of data. We used the Disc-At-Once write method.

The Optiarc AD-7200A burned our test DVD R at 20x in 4 minutes and 55 seconds.

Let’s compare with other drives in our table below.

The Optiarc AD-7200A was one of the fastest drives when writing our test DVD R media.

DVD DL:

In this test we will measure the time for writing to DVD R DL discs. We used Nero Burning Rom to burn an ISO DVD-Video compilation containing 8103Mb of data. We used the Disc-At-Once write method.

The Optiarc AD-7200A burned our test DVD R DL at 8x in 18 minutes and 54 seconds.

Let’s compare with other drives in our table below.

The Optiarc AD-7200A was about average when writing our DVD+R DL test disc, but we don’t yet have a large enough sample base to really compare.

Standalone DVD-Player compatibility test:

We only have 3 standalone DVD-Players available and 1 standalone DVD-RAM DVD-R recorder to test the DVD+R DL medias (Book Type: DVD-ROM) and the DVD-R DL media (Book Type: DVD-R):      

• Panasonic DVD-RV32
• Panasonic SA-HT520
• Proline DVDP350
• Panasonic DMR-E50 recorder

Compatibility results:

All our DVD Standalone devices played the DVD+R DL media burned by the Optiarc AD-7200A without any problems.

Only one DVD Standalone device would play the Optiarc AD-7200A burned DVD-R DL media without any problems.

We would like to mention, that the compatibility issue with standalone DVD Players/Recorders and the DVD-R DL media format is caused by incompatibilities with the standalone devices used in this review, and not the Optiarc AD-7200A or media format used.

CSS Encrypted DVD-Video ripping tests:

Most modern DVD burners don’t have Video riplock and in most cases will read a pressed DVD-Video SL disc at 16x speed. However, some drives use a CSS riplock when it comes to extracting data from the disc. If you attempt to rip a pressed DVD-Video with CSS encryption to your hard drive, then the ripping speed may be locked at a much lower speed than 16x.

To test this feature, we needed a reference from a drive that we know does not employ CSS riplock. We choose the Optiarc AD-7203A as a reference drive for this purpose and ripped a SL and DL pressed DVD-Video to our hard drive using DVDFab Platinum (full disc option).

We should point out, that ripping and compressing a DL DVD-Video disc to DVD 5 format is quite CPU intensive. The more power your system has, the less likely your system power will affect the results. The PC used in this review is equipped with a fast Intel Quad Core processor and fast hard drives. We checked to make sure our review PC was not having an impact on the results.

Below we can see our reference results.

SL CSS encrypted DVD Video disc “Goldeneye” (Optiarc AD-7203A reference result)

Time taken = 6m:12s

DL CSS encrypted DVD Video disc “The Green Mile” (Optiarc AD-7203A reference result)

Time taken = 12m:43s

Now let’s test the Optiarc AD-7200A using the same testing procedures.

SL CSS encrypted DVD-Video (Goldeneye):

The Optiarc AD-7200A does not employ CSS riplock and the drive performed very well, completing the test in 6 minutes and 40 seconds.

DL CSS encrypted DVD-Video (The Green Mile):

The Optiarc AD-7200A does not employ CSS riplock and the drive performed very well, completing the test in 12 minutes and 44 seconds.

To compare with other drives, we present the table below.

As we can see, we don’t have a large database of results to compare with. But the Optiarc AD-7200A performed very well with this test.

Advanced tests:

To round off this review, we will run some advanced tests on the Optiarc AD-7200A. These tests are: “Sheep Test”, and some special disc tests.

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 and be found here.

In the screenshot below taken from CloneCD, we see the Optiarc AD-7200A supports everything.

The Optiarc AD-7200A supports DAO-RAW96 recording mode, which basically means, it can write uncorrected data and sub-channel data.

As we can see from the results, the Optiarc AD-7200A is a two sheep burner.

Overburning CD-R:

We tested the Optiarc AD-7200A to see if it could overburn CD-R media. The results are below.

700MB (80 minute) over-burn test:

The Optiarc AD-7200A reported a maximum overburn capacity of 83:28.18. We then setup a test burn with CD-Speed of slightly less than maximum and burned the disc, 83:20.50 to be exact.

As we can see, the Optiarc AD-7200A had no problems in writing our test disc. Now let’s see if the Optiarc AD-7200A can read back our created disc.

The Optiarc AD-7200A had no problems in reading our test disc.

MINI DVD discs:

In this section we are going to test if the Optiarc AD-7200A is capable of writing and reading mini DVD-RW discs with a capacity of 30 minutes/1.46 GB.

The Memorex media is made by CMC Magnetics.  Thanks to Memorex Europe for sending us this media.

The Optiarc AD-7200A had no problems in writing our test mini DVD-RW disc. Now let’s check if the Optiarc AD-7200A can also read back our test disc.

The Optiarc AD-7200A read back our test mini DVD-RW disc without any problems.

Video-CD disc:

For our final test we wanted to see how the Optiarc AD-7200A would read a Video-CD, for this test we created a Video-CD with Nero Burning ROM 8, and used NERO CD-Speed to read the disc back. Below is our result:

The Optiarc AD-7200A had no problems in reading our test VCD, although the reading speed was locked at 20x.

Disc Quality Scanning:

The Optiarc AD-7200A is able to scan CD and DVD media for quality using CD-Speed. We will now briefly examine this feature.

To start off, we needed a reference scan from our Lite-On LH-20A1L using the same test disc, so we could compare the results.

Lite-on LH-20A1L reference scan:

Lite-On LH-20A1L reference scan

Optiarc AD-7200A 5x scanning speed:

Optiarc AD-7200A 8x scanning speed:

Optiarc AD-7200A 12x scanning speed:

Optiarc AD-7200A 16x scanning speed:

Although the results can’t be directly compared to our Lite-On LH-20A1L scan, the Optiarc AD-7200A appears to have done a reasonable job of scanning the disc at the various scanning speeds. As expected, PI errors increase as the scanning speed increases. It’s a useful feature to have, if you don’t have access to a Lite-On drive for PI/PIF scanning.

This concludes our Optiarc AD-7200A review. To read the conclusion, click on the link below....

DVD-RAM writing performance

Conclusion