detail information

For our final (advanced) tests we're going to test how the Plextor PX-712A drive performs with data and audio copy-protections. Besides that we'll also check if the drive can overburn 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-712A drive 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:40m:38s	Yes
	Serious Sam Second Encounter	SafeDisc v2.51.021	2m:29s	Yes
	C&C Generals	SafeDisc v2.80.010	2m:26s	Yes
	Neverwinter Nights	SecuRom v4.76.00.0051	2m:53s	Yes
	Tekken 3	PlayStation LibCrypt	2m:50s	Yes

The Plextor PX-712A showed a very good performance during our copy protected data test. It read all of the protected discs at maximum speed, except for the LaserLock disc which have always been a 'problem' for Plextor drives. More importantly, the PX-712A was able to create a working back-up of all the protections we tested without needing any software help (like Amplfy Weak Sectors for the SafeDisc protection).

Copy-Protected Audio:

For the copy protected audio tests we used the PlexTools software with the 'Single Session' option enabled. We inserted the disc into the drive and waited if the tracks would be recognized. If they were we extracted some tracks and listened to them to hear if they were properly extracted:

The Plextor PX-712A drive could recognize all discs without any trouble (although the drive did need some time to recognize the Doc.loc protected audio disc). 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 Plextor PX-712A 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:

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.

Overburning:

We can be very brief with our overburning tests. As we already mentioned the Plextor PX-712A drive supports the GigaRec technology. It will thus come as no surprise the drive can fully overburn discs up to 99 minutes. The drive can, of course, also perfectly read overburned discs.

8cm Discs:

For our final test we'll, as always, test if the Plextor drive can read and write 8cm discs. For this test we set-up a 200MB data compilation in Nero 6 and started the write process. As expected the write process was completed successfully: