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In this part of the review we'll take a look at the Yamaha CRW-F1's CD-ReWriting abilities and its Mount Rainier (CD-MRW) support. For both tests we used Ahead's InCD version 3.31.0. For the erase tests we used Elaborate Bytes' CloneCD version 4.0.1.10.

Packet Writing:

We formatted the Mitsubishi 650MB ultra-speed CD-RW disc which was certified for 24X re-writing. We fired up InCD, inserted the empty CD-ReWriteable disc in the recorder and measured the time it took from inserting the disc till it was ejected again. Before formatting the CD-RW disc we checked the InCD settings for the drive and noticed that the Yamaha CRW-F1 drive has an option to use the CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) besides the normal P-CAV (Partial-Constant Angular Velocity) write method:

Yamaha CRW-F1 InCD Page Settings

Also note that the option 'Format disc to CD-MRW' (Mt. Rainier) has been disabled in the screenshot. We will do the CD-MRW tests later on this page of our review.

When formatting was complete we measured the time it took for the drive to write our test folder of data (containing 400MB (419.742.820 bytes)). We've measured the write time in both the P-CAV and CAV write method but we couldn't measure the difference of more than a few seconds. This is probably because our test folder uses mainly large files of around 70MB and you will only notice a difference in write time when writing a lot of smaller files. In the table below we've summed it all up for you:

The Yamaha CRW-F1 showed an excellent result and the difference between a 24X CD-ReWriter and a 10X or 12X drive is striking as you can see from the table if your compare the write times. As you can also see from the results the CRW-F1 drive also erases CD-RW discs at 24X:

Yamaha CRW-F1 erasing CD-RW disc

After erasing the CD-RW disc with CloneCD we wrote the same test data again but now with Nero Burning Rom. In the screenshot below you can see that the Yamaha CRW-F1 needs 2 minutes and 31 seconds to write the test data. This is about two minutes faster than a 12X CD-ReWriter:

Mount Rainier Tests:

The Yamaha CRW-F1 is Yamaha's second drive supporting the Mt. Rainier (CD-MRW) format. We had some problems when reviewing the CRW3200E drive so let's see if this new Yamaha drive can do better. If you want to read more on the CD-MRW format please read our Mount Rainier article . In the table below you can see an overview of the achieved results using InCD version 3.31.0:

As you can see in the table above the Yamaha CRW-F1 drive this time had no problems with our Mt. Rainier tests and even beats the VisionTek/Lite-On drive with several tests. Overall a good result for the Yamaha drive.

Conclusion:

The Yamaha CRW-F1 performs excellent with CD-ReWriteable media. As you will have seen from the achieved results, 24X re-writing is a lot faster than 12X re-writing. The drive was a little slow when doing a quick erase with CloneCD but with the other tests it beats the 10X and 12X drives with more than two or even three minutes!

With the CRW-F1 drive Yamaha has improved the Mt. Rainier support. The drive could handle all tests we did and could keep up with the VisionTek drive in most tests. Sometimes it was even a few seconds faster and it thus achieves an excellent result.

On the next page we've summed up our tests results with various media...

Protected Audio

Media Compatibility