detail information

For our final (advanced) tests we're going to test how the Ridata RDA-08041 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 Ridata drive is fully supported by CloneCD:

The Ridata 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	26m:42s	Yes
	Serious Sam Second Encounter	SafeDisc v2.51.021	13m:45s	No
	C&C Generals	SafeDisc v2.80.010	13m:59s	No
	Neverwinter Nights	SecuRom v4.76.00.0051	2m:27s	No
	Fifa Football 2004	PlayStation LibCrypt	2m:03s	Yes

The Ridata drive showed a poor performance when writing the data protections. When it came to reading the discs there were no problems but the drive failed to produce a working back-up of our SafeDisc and SecuRom protected games. Even with CloneCD's 'Amplify Weak Sectors' option enabled, the SafeDisc back-ups didn't work in our Toshiba SD-M1502 DVD-ROM.

Copy-Protected Audio:

For the copy protected audio 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 Ridata drive:

Luckily, when it came to reading audio protections, the Ridata drive performed a lot better. It had no problems whatsoever reading our protected audio discs!

Overburning:

For our overburning test we, as always, used the Nero CD/DVD Speed software and started the test. According to the software the Ridata drive can fully overburn up to 99 minutes:

To test if the results we got from Nero CD/DVD Speed were correct we burned a 99 minute audio compilation using the Nero 6 software. The burn process was completed without a problem and reading back the disc was also no problem. The top read speed the Ridata drive was a whopping 47.30x!

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. Unfortunately the Ridata drive recognized the GigaRec disc as a blank disc and thus it could not read back any of the data on the disc.

8cm Discs:

For our final test we'll, as always, test if the Ridata 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: