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In this part of our Ridata RDA-08041 review we'll test how fast the drive can read various media. As we already mentioned before, the Ridata drive can read DVD media at 12x while CD media can be read at 40x. Let's see if this is indeed the case.

DVD-Video:

For our DVD reading tests we're going to start with a DVD-Video read test of a single-layered and double-layered DVD disc. Keep in mind that a low read speed has no effect on the drive's performance when playing a DVD. The drive's read speed is only important when you, for example, want to rip a DVD disc to your hard disk.

From both graphs you can see that the Ridata drive has a limited read speed of 4x max when it comes to reading DVD-Video discs. This means that the Ridata drive is not very suited for ripping DVD discs since it will take a long time to rip a disc to your hard disk. Below you can see the results we achieved compared to other DVD recorders:

DVD+R(W):

To test the Ridata's read performance with DVD+R and DVD+RW media we simply copied 4.4GB to an empty DVD+R and DVD+RW disc. Below you can see the results:

When it came to reading DVD+R(W) media the Ridata drive performed a lot better than when reading the DVD-Video discs. This time the drive had no problems reaching 8x with both the DVD+R and DVD+RW media. In the table below we've compared the achieved results again. This time the Ridata had the highest average read speed:

DVD-R(W):

To test the Ridata's read performance with DVD-R and DVD-RW media we again copied roughly 4.4GB to an empty DVD-R and DVD-RW disc. Below you can see the results again:

As you can see we had some problems when reading the DVD-R and DVD-RW media. When we did our tests with DVD-R media the Ridata drive read the discs fine but always gave an error when doing the seek times tests. We tried four different DVD-R media brands but they all failed, even when we burned them at 1x (using a Plextor PX-708A DVD recorder). When reading the DVD-RW media the drive did work although it showed some read problems at the end of the disc.

CD-ROM:

For the transfer rate tests we used a pressed CD-ROM containing the PlexTools software (v1.05) which was exactly 74 minutes (333.000 sectors) long. Below you can see the produced Nero CD-DVD Speed graph:

When reading pressed CD-ROM media the Ridata drive performed very well as it had no problems reaching its rated speed of 40x and going faster than that. The drive's seek times were also pretty good and well within specification of 120ms random stroke:

CD-R:

For the transfer rate tests with CD-Recordable Media we used a back-up (CD-R) of the PlexTools software disc. The used disc was a 'That's Write' CD-R certified up to 16x writing and manufactured by Gigastorage. Here are the results:

The graph shows us that the Ridata drive again had no problems reaching its rated read speed of 40x and going faster than that. Its seek times were also pretty good again. When we compare them to other drives we've reviewed we can see that the Ridata has the highest average CD-R read speeds:

CD-RW:

To test the transfer rate with CD-RW discs we once again used the "PlexTools v1.05" disc only this time we read from a CD-ReWriteable disc. The used disc was a 'Plextor High Speed CD-RW' disc. Below you can see the produced graphs with Nero CD-DVD Speed again:

As you can see from the produced graph the Ridata drive has a limited read speed for CD-RW media. With an average read speed of 20.47x it was the slowest drive I've reviewed:

Audio - Digital Audio Extraction:

To test the Ridata's digital audio extraction performance we again used Nero CD-DVD Speed to do a transfer rate test. The audio disc we used was of a slightly larger size than in our previous tests (77 minutes). In the graph below you can see the performance of the DVD-recorder:

Here the Ridata drive showed a great performance as it reached almost 44x when reading our audio disc. With an average read speed of 32.94x it's by far the fastest drive I've reviewed:

As a final test we used the PlexTools Professional software to extract the audio disc to our hard disk. Normally we also include the results with Exact Audio Copy (EAC) but for an unknown reason the Ridata drive didn't work very well with the EAC software. It constantly gave us timing problems or extraction was terribly slow (less than 1x). Here are the results with the PlexTools Professional software. As you can see the complete disc was extracted in 2 minutes and 36 seconds with a maximum speed of 41.7x. An excellent result!

Audio - Advanced DAE Quality Test:

As always, to conclude our CD media read tests we did an 'Advanced DAE Quality Test' with Nero CD-DVD Speed. You can see the produced results below:

Once again an excellent result. The Ridata drive gets a quality score of 100% and a high average read speed of 30x which is not bad at all. The drive had no problems reading SubChannel Data and CD-Text. The Ridata drive could read data from the lead-in area of the disc but not from the lead-out area of the disc.