detail information

It happens to all of us sooner or later: a disc is scratched and cannot be read properly anymore... In this test we took a CD-Recordable and (heavily) scratched it with some fine sandpaper. We then did a surface scan with Nero CD Speed and you can see the results below. First off let's start with the ATIP information from the used CD-Recordable:

• ATIP: 97m 15s 11f
  
• Disc Manufacturer: Ritek Co.
  
• Reflective layer: Dye (Long strategy; e.g. Cyanine, Azo etc.)
  
• Media type: CD-Recordable
  
• Recording Speeds: min. unknown - max. unknown
  
• Nominal Capacity: 702.83MB (79m 59s 74f / LBA: 359849)

Now for the achieved results. We read the disc with the VisionTek Xtasy 48X and then read the same disc with a PleXCombo PX-320A (firmware 1.01), a Yamaha CRW3200E (firmware 1.0d), a TEAC CD-W540E (firmware 1.0B), a Mitsumi CR-480ATE (firmware 1.0E) and a Toshiba SD-M1502 DVD-ROM (firmware 1012) for comparison. You can see the results in the screenshot below. Please note that damaged sectors can still be read. The important percentage is the one of the unreadable sectors. Of course the less, the better:

VisionTek Xtasy 48X reading scratched disc

In the table below we've summed up our test results comparing them to other drives we've previously reviewed. Again, keep in mind that the important percentage is the one of the unreadable sectors. Of course the less, the better:

To add a little more to our scratched data reading tests we've added another test for you. We wrote a low quality 74 minute CD-Recordable with the VisionTek Xtasy 48X drive using Nero Burning Rom. We disabled its SMART-BURN feature so errors would probably be created:

We then scanned the disc with Nero CD Speed using the following drives; the VisionTek Xtasy 48X (firmware VS06), a PleXCombo PX-320A (firmware 1.02), a TEAC CD-W540E (firmware 1.0C), a Mitsumi CR-480ATE (firmware 1.0E) and a Toshiba SD-M1502 DVD-ROM (firmware 1012). You can see the screenshots of all drives reading the low quality disc below:

VisionTek Xtasy 48X reading low quality disc

TEAC CD-W540E reading low quality disc

PleXCombo PX-320A reading low quality disc

Mitsumi CR-480ATE reading low quality disc

Toshiba SD-M1502 reading low quality disc

In the table below we've summed up our test results again, comparing them to other drives we've previously reviewed. Again, keep in mind that the important percentage is the one of the unreadable sectors. Of course the less, the better:

Conclusion:

The VisionTek drive performs very well and has the least amount of unreadable sectors (18.70%) with the heavily scratched disc. When reading the low quality disc it was again very good and together with the Toshiba SD-M1502 DVD-ROM it was the only drive that could fully read the disc (compared to almost 40% damaged sectors the Mitsumi CR-480ATE reported). The Toshiba drive did have less damaged sectors so the VisionTek Xtasy 48X drive gets the second place here. Nevertheless an excellent result!

That concludes the reading part of our review. Now it's time to see how the VisionTek Xtasy 48X performs when writing discs...