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For our final (advanced) tests we're going to test how the Plextor drive performs with data and audio copy-protections. Besides that we'll also check if the drive can overburn, if it can read GigaRec discs and if it can handle 8cm discs. Let's start with the data copy-protections:

Copy-Protected Data:

For our copy-protected data tests we, as always, used CloneCD to read and write several popular copy-protections. In the picture below you can see that the Plextor PX-708A is fully supported by CloneCD:

The Plextor drive supports the DAO-RAW96 recording mode which basically means that the drive can write uncorrected data and SubChannel Data. In the table below we've summed up all of our results and after the table we will clarify our results:

Protected Data	Game Title	Protection (version)	Read Time	Back-up Works
	Desperados	LaserLock	1h:39m:39s	Yes
	The Sims: House Party	SafeDisc v2.10.030	2m:19s	Yes
	Mafia: The City Of Lost Heaven (CD1)	SafeDisc v2.70.030	2m:35s	Yes
	Neverwinter Nights (CD3)	SecuRom v4.76.00.0051	2m:55s	Yes
	Final Fantasy VIII (CD1)	PlayStation LibCrypt	2m:59s	Yes

A bit to our surprise the Plextor PX-708A showed a very good performance during our data copy protection tests. The drive was only struggling with the LaserLock protection (something that is quite common for Plextor drives) but other than that it beats all protections without a problem. And, just as we saw with the Plextor Premium drive, the PX-708A drive could copy the SafeDisc 2 protection without needing any additional help from CloneCD's weak sector amplification. SecuRom reading was also no problem for the drive so overall an excellent result!

Copy-Protected Audio:

Since we're reviewing a Plextor drive we're going to use the PlexTools Professional software for our protected audio disc tests. For the tests we simply inserted the audio discs in the drive and waited if the drive could recognize the disc and if so, could extract the audio tracks. In the table below we've summed up our results. Note that before we did any of these tests we disabled the 'Auto Insert Notification' for the Plextor drive via the PlexTools software:

The Plextor PX-708A drive could recognize all discs without much trouble. It needed some time to recognize the Doc.loc protected audio disc but once it had been detected the drive was able to rip the tracks without a problem. When reading the Key2Audio protections the drive performed excellent since the discs were recognized almost instantly and the drive was able to rip the tracks. The PX-708A drive also had no problems detecting the CDS200 protected disc but when we ripped the tracks PlexTools reported that there were errors on the disc:

Start of extraction
Extracting track 15 (D:PX-708ATrack_15.wav - 04:05)
...
468 errors
Elapsed time: 02:38
1 track(s) successfully extracted

When ripping a CDS200 protected audio disc it's quite common that errors are generated during the extraction process. These errors can result in small pops and clicks in the ripped tracks. We of course listened to the extracted tracks but we couldn't hear any distortions. We also loaded the extracted tracks in Nero's Wave Editor software but there were no huge spikes in the wave track.

Overburning:

For our overburning test we, as always, used the Nero CD-DVD Speed software and started the test. According to the CD-DVD Speed software the Plextor PX-708A can fully overburn up to 99 minutes:

To test if the results we got from Nero CD-DVD Speed were correct we used the PlexTools Professional software to set up a new audio compilation of 96 minutes. As a small extra test we also added CD Text to the disc to see if the Plextor PX-708A drive could write this data correctly:

The disc was written without a problem although the drive did lower the write speed to a safe 16x. Next we of course tested if the Plextor drive could read the disc and the CD Text. Both tests were successfully completed and instead of showing you an image of the PX-708A drive reading the 99 minute media CD-R we're going to continue to reading a GigaRec disc instead.

GigaRec Discs:

GigaRec is a new technology that was introduced with the Plextor Premium drive (and as of yet this is the only drive that supports this technique). In short GigaRec allows you to expand the capacity of a normal 80 minute (700MB) CD-R disc up to 111 minutes (or almost 1GB of data). GigaRec has different rates and for our next test we used a GigaRec disc that was recorded with the highest setting, 1.4x, which means that there is 111 minutes of audio on a standard 80 minute disc:

As you can see the Plextor PX-708A drive was able to read the GigaRec disc although it did use a low read speed of only 8x. Nevertheless, since not many drives are able to read GigaRec disc, this is a good result. On the other hand though, we of course expected the Plextor PX-708A to be able to read the disc since GigaRec was introduced by Plextor..

8cm Discs:

For our final test we'll, as always, test if the Plextor drive can read and write 8cm discs. For our write test we used Nero Burning Rom and after that we used Nero CD-DVD Speed to do another transfer rate test. As expected, both tests were completed without a problem:

Re-Write Tests

Conclusion