ForumSony BWU-200S detail information
| Posted by | Kip R. |
| Posted on | 12/01/08 05:13 |
| Manufacturer | Sony |
| Product | Sony BWU-200S |
| Description | Internal Blu-ray Disc Rewritable Drive |
DVD-RAM writing performance
The Sony BWU-200S is a Blu-ray rewriteable drive which is also supports writing and reading the DVD-RAM format; reading and writing at 5X.
This drive is one of few drives that also supports the DVD-RAM format, lets us look at the recording side of the disc, and as you can see it has differences from the other DVD+R/W/R9 DL and DVD-R/W discs.
We can see a very fascinating pattern of darker spots. These tick marks are "address information" ("Pre-mastered Pit Header Field") which is embedded onto the disc. This is header information in front of data sector area, and is the same format as HDD and MO.
A DVD-RAM’s disc can be formatted in the following formats:
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FAT32
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UDF 1.02
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UDF 1.50
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UDF 2.00
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UDF 2.01
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UDF 2.50
By formatting a DVD-RAM disc with FAT32 it will act like a removable hard drive and all writing will be done as “background processes”. Meaning you do not have to wait for it to finish, you can start or work with other applications while the DVD-RAM is working without noticing any “hangs” or CPU slowdowns.
DVD-RAM has error correction, but also has error replacement to spare sectors as a "defect management" function. This gives higher reliability than other DVD format.
Another advantage with DVD-RAM is that the discs can be formatted/erased/written at over 100,000 times before it will/can cause/report any errors.
Lets us take a look how the drive performs:
Writing the Maxell 5X without verification
Writing the Maxell 5X with verification
Transfer Rate Test
For those of you who are not familiar with DVD-RAM, you may probably think that something went wrong during the write process with the verification turned on, since the 5x media was written at just under 2X. But don’t worry, that is pretty normal for DVD-RAM discs. The reason for the lower writing speed is the drive constantly reads back the data after writing it to verify that it’s written correctly. We can also call it a “bullet proof” writing/verify technique, with no data loss/errors.
Summary
The Sony BWU-200S was able to read and write our tested media without any problems.
Moving on to next page you can read about Blu-Ray Performance...
DVD+R DL/-R DL Writing performance
Check out your player's format capability before burning any discs with any BD burner. Some players (like my Panny) will play only BDMV format; some players will play BDAV. This burner will burn either, but some burning software won't support BDAV. I am using Ulead Movie Factory with the HD add-in; it will burn either format.
Others have noted that the Sony's drawer won't fit thru a normal cutout - that was the situation with my Dell XPS400. Tried trimming out the hole in the Dell; gave up and mounted the burner in an external enclosure.
Overall, thumbs up even at the $600USD price.
It is actually a cannabilized external one for a DVD drive. External 5.25" SATA enclosures are a little hard to find and are well over $50 when you do. I had to run a power cable and SATA cable out of the back of the PC and the back of the external enclosure. The enclosure I use has a power switch that is not maintained and the PC showed drive not available when booting if the power was not on. So, I ran an cable from the PC power supply. Kinda junky doing it that way, but it works.
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