DVD-ROM/CD-R/RW Drives Roundup (Part 2)

I didn't expect so many various drives from huge and well-known companies. For example, Plextor - there are no users who have never heard about drives of this company before. The testing technique remained the same. But we will add results of testing with a DVD+R disc. Therefore we will be able to evaluate operation of the tested drives with all latest DVD standards.

Test participants.

Test results.

Recording of CD-R and CD-RW discs (Part 2).

CD recording time.

As some combo drives have lower maximum write speed, we carried out the tests at several speeds so that it can be possible to compare different devices.

Recording of the CD-R SKC (cyanine, 16x rated speed).

CD-RW drive	Time at 12x(min.)	Time at 16x(min.)	Time at 20x(min.)
PIONEER DCR-111	06:52	--:--	--:--
PLEXTOR PX-320A	06:58	06:22	06:34
LG GCC-4120B	06:28	--:--	--:--

The LG's drive is the fastest in recording cyanine media at 12x.

Recording of the CD-R Philips Silver Premium (phthalocyanine, 16x rated speed).

CD-RW drive	Time at 12x(min.)	Time at 16x(min.)	Time at 20x(min.)
PIONEER DCR-111	06:35	--:--	--:--
PLEXTOR PX-320A	06:48	05:22	05:24
LG GCC-4120B	06:28	--:--	--:--

Again the LG's drive copes best of all with the phthalocyanine discs at 12x. The write speed of this drive is identical for both media types.

It's interesting that recording at 20x is sometimes slower than at 16x for the Plextor. It can be caused either by the Power Rec II technology used for record quality improvement or by the Z-CLV technology used at high speeds (this technology controls changes in the write speed depending on a disc's zone).

Time of full formatting of a CD-RW disc in UDF format with the InCD ver. 3.24.3. CD-RW recording in UDF, 650 Mb test packet in 6500 files.

Philips CD-RW74 4x

CD-RW drive	Formatting time (min.)	Recording time (min.)
PIONEER DCR-111	29:25	55:41
PLEXTOR PX-320A	28:50	55:12
LG GCC-4120B	28:53	56:12

Verbatim DataLifePlus 10x

CD-RW drive	Formatting time (min.)	Recording time (min.)
PIONEER DCR-111	12:43	26:12
PLEXTOR PX-320A	13:01	26:10
LG GCC-4120B	22:38	42:31

Unfortunately, the LG's drive has 8x maximum when working with high-speed CD-RW discs, hence such modest results. The Plextor's solution takes the first position in the tests with CD-RW media.

Operation with 80mm CDs using a CD-RW disc, formatting and recording in UDF.

Formatting and recording of a 80mm CD-RW disc in the UDF format. 4x write speed.

CD-RW drive	Formatting time (min.)	Recording time (min.)
PIONEER DCR-111	10:32	6:04
PLEXTOR PX-320A	10:45	6:06
LG GCC-4120B	11:03	6:10

All drives are able to read and write 80mm discs well.

BLER factor of recorded CD-R discs.
For these tests we used a device described in this review.

CD-RW drive	Philips Silver Premium	SKC 16x
PIONEER DCR-111	4-8	12-16
PLEXTOR PX-320A	29-36	34-41
LG GCC-4120B	1-3	3-6

Obviously, the high write speed affected the results of the Plextor's solution, and even the Power Rec II didn't help. Nevertheless, they are not so bad. The LG's recording quality looks quite surprising.

Overburn.

CD-RW drive	Philips Silver Premium	SKC 16x
PIONEER DCR-111	75:34.04	76:35.42
PLEXTOR PX-320A	76:29.25	77:07.35
LG GCC-4120B	76:31.29	78:06.59

The highest Overburn is reached with the LG's model on all media types.

Basic parameters of CD reading.

CDWinBench 99 test results.

Although the Plextor's drive outscores the Pioneer's in the data rate by a great margin, it loses to the latter in the Winmark.

NERO CD Speed results.

Test CD reading.

PIONEER DCR-111

PLEXTOR PX-320A

LG GCC-4120B

	PIONEER DCR-111	PLEXTOR PX-320A	LG GCC-4120B
Average speed	27.43x CAV	30.70x CAV	24.69x CAV
Random Seek	94 ms	111 ms	99 ms
Full Seek	183 ms	392 ms	157 ms
SpinUp Time	N/A	N/A	N/A
SpinDown Time	N/A	N/A	N/A
Disc Eject Time	0.76	1.44 sec	1.31 sec
Disc Load Time	10.22 sec	12.32 sec	8.82 sec
Disc Recognition Time	0.00 sec	0.08 sec	1.08 sec
Accurate stream	Yes	Yes	No

Again the Plextor's drive is ahead in the disc reading speed, but falls behind in all other parameters.

CD-ROM Drive Analyzer

CD-R reading.

PIONEER DCR-111

PLEXTOR PX-320A

LG GCC-4120B

CD-RW reading.

PIONEER DCR-111

PLEXTOR PX-320A

LG GCC-4120B

Low-quality CD reading.

PIONEER DCR-111

PLEXTOR PX-320A

LG GCC-4120B

As we can see, the Plextor's drive enabled a speed reduction mechanism for the low-quality discs. If this drive decides that a given disc is of poor quality, it will reduce the speed without any further attempts to lift it up. In all other respects, all discs cope quite well with reading of low-quality CDs. There were no uncorrectable errors in the reading process.

Sound track extraction from audio CDs (CDDAE 99).

PIONEER DCR-111

	Licensed disc	Pirated disc
Average extraction speed	15.3x	14.7x
Total errors	0.00%	0.00%

PLEXTOR PX-320A

	Licensed disc	Pirated disc
Average extraction speed	32.8x	32.2x
Total errors	0.00%	0.00%

LG GCC-4120B

	Licensed disc	Pirated disc
Average extraction speed	17.6x	12.4x
Total errors	0.00%	0.00%

Plextor promised in its booklets the highest possible extraction speed. Well, it's really so. This drive leaves all its competitors far behind.

Advanced DAE Quality(Nero CD-Speed)

PIONEER DCR-111

Offset	2640 bytes (660 samples)
Sequential Read Test	Average Speed: 15.97 X Data Errors: 0 Sync Errors: 0
Harmonica Read Test	Average Access Time: 127 ms Data Errors: 1321875 Sync Errors: 0 Total Data Errors: 1321875 Total Sync Errors: 0 Quality Score: 75.0
On The Fly Copying Simulation	Copying at 1 X OK Copying at 2 X OK Copying at 4 X OK Copying at 6 X OK Copying at 8 X OK Copying at 10 X OK Copying at 12 X data errors Copying at 16 X too slow
CD Text	Drive is capable of reading CD Text information
Subchannel Data	Test 1 Track (01): 01 Relative position (01:05.00): 01:05.00 Absolute position (01:07.00): 01:07.00 Index (5): 5 Test 2 Track (17): 17 Relative position (01:33.00): 01:33.00 Absolute position (33:35.00): 33:35.00 Index (1): 1 Test 3 Track (36): 36 Relative position (00:00.00): 00:00.00 Absolute position (70:02.00): 70:02.00 Index (1): 1
Leadin	Drive can read max. 1 sectors (-00:00.01) from the Leadin
Leadout	Drive cannot read data from the Leadout

PLEXTOR PX-320A

Offset	272 bytes (68 samples)
Sequential Read Test	Average Speed: 29.71 X Data Errors: 0 Sync Errors: 0
Harmonica Read Test	Average Access Time: 159 ms Data Errors: 0 Sync Errors: 0 Total Data Errors: 0 Total Sync Errors: 0 Quality Score: 100.0
On The Fly Copying Simulation	Copying at 1 X OK Copying at 2 X OK Copying at 4 X OK Copying at 6 X OK Copying at 8 X OK Copying at 10 X OK Copying at 12 X OK Copying at 16 X OK
CD Text	Drive is capable of reading CD Text information
Subchannel Data	Test 1 Track (01): 01 Relative position (01:05.00): 01:05.00 Absolute position (01:07.00): 01:07.00 Index (5): 5 Test 2 Track (17): 17 Relative position (01:33.00): 01:33.00 Absolute position (33:35.00): 33:35.00 Index (1): 1 Test 3 Track (36): 36 Relative position (00:00.00): 00:00.00 Absolute position (70:02.00): 70:02.00 Index (1): 1
Leadin	Drive can read max. 75 sectors (-00:01.00) from the Leadin
Leadout	Drive can read max. 3325 sectors (00:44.25) from the Leadout

LG GCC-4120B

Offset	2812 bytes (703 samples)
Sequential Read Test	Average Speed: 18.11 X Data Errors: 0 Sync Errors: 0
Harmonica Read Test	Average Access Time: 138 ms Data Errors: 293750 Sync Errors: 0 Total Data Errors: 293750 Total Sync Errors: 0 Quality Score: 90.6
On The Fly Copying Simulation	Copying at 1 X OK Copying at 2 X OK Copying at 4 X OK Copying at 6 X OK Copying at 8 X Data Errors: 58750 Copying at 10 X Data Errors: 29375 Copying at 12 X too slow Copying at 16 X too slow
CD Text	Drive is capable of reading CD Text information
Subchannel Data	Test 1 Track (01): 01 Relative position (01:05.00): 01:05.00 Absolute position (01:07.00): 01:07.00 Index (5): 5 Test 2 Track (17): 17 Relative position (01:33.00): 00:00.00 -> incorrect! Absolute position (33:35.00): 64:00.00 -> incorrect! Index (1): 1 Test 3 Track (36): 36 Relative position (00:00.00): 64:00.00 -> incorrect! Absolute position (70:02.00): 64:00.00 -> incorrect! Index (1): 1
Leadin	Drive cannot read data from the Leadin
Leadout	Drive cannot read data from the Leadout

The data obtained earlier coincide with the above results. The Plextor's drive copes with it best and fast of all.

The detailed information on the tested parameters is given in the help file to the Nero CD Speed test program. If you don't want to download the utility, then here you can find the HTMl help file.

Reading of CD-R 780MB (90min)

CD-RWdrive	Rostok Media 90 min
PIONEER DCR-111	5:26 min
PLEXTOR PX-320A	6:34 min
LG GCC-4120B	8:10 min

All drives read excellently the test CD. The Pioneer's drive is on the top.

Basic parameters of DVD reading.

NERO DVD Speed test.

Reading of test DVD.

PIONEER DCR-111

PLEXTOR PX-320A

LG GCC-4120B

	PIONEER DCR-111	PLEXTOR PX-320A	LG GCC-4120B
Average speed	5.88x CAV	2.07x P-CAV	4.50x CAV
Random Seek	92 ms	180 ms	106 ms
Full Seek	182ms	323 ms	182 ms
SpinUp Time	1.03 sec	1.58 sec	2.27 sec
SpinDown Time	2.76 sec	2.49 sec	3.68 sec
Disc Eject Time	0.76 sec	1.46 sec	1.19 sec
Disc Load Time	7.17 sec	23.91 sec	14.41 sec
Layer Change Time	87 ms	172 ms	15 ms
Disc Recognition Time	0.00 sec	N/A	0.17 sec

As you can see, the intelligence of the Plextor's drive played a mean joke, because when working with DVD-Video the drive switches to a lower speed to reduce a noise level. Unfortunately, we were not able to raise the speed manually.

DVD-Video copying with the Smart Ripper.

CD-RWdrive	DVD bèäeo
PIONEER DCR-111	10:15 min
PLEXTOR PX-320A	28:32 min
LG GCC-4120B	13:34 min

Well, the Plextor's model has expressed a desire to work at a reduced speed with DVD-Video.

Reading of the recordable DVD discs.

Reading DVD+R.

PIONEER DCR-111

PLEXTOR PX-320A

LG GCC-4120B

All drives managed to read information from the DVD+R disc. But we constantly pressed the Retry button because of multiple errors with the Pioneer's disc.

DVD+RW reading.

PIONEER DCR-111

PLEXTOR PX-320A

LG GCC-4120B

All drives cope nicely with this format. The highest speed is reached by the Plextor's model.

DVD-R reading.

PIONEER DCR-111

PLEXTOR PX-320A

The LG's drive can't read the DVD-R. The Plextor's model defines the disc's size incorrectly, hence the errors. But it did finish reading the disc.

DVD-RW reading.

PIONEER DCR-111

PLEXTOR PX-320A

LG GCC-4120B

Here the Pioneer's drive is in the same situation as before. It failed to define the disc's size correctly and brought in some errors. But again, it was able to read the contents till the end.

DVD-Video playback with Cyberlink PowerDVD 4.0.

All drives play DVD-Video without any artifacts.

Drives' physical characteristics.

Noise.

CD-RW drive	Tray	CD-Seek	CD general	DVD-Seek	DVD general
PIONEER DCR-111	7/10	7/10	6/10	8/10	8/10
PLEXTOR PX-320A	10/10	7/10	6/10	8/10	8/10
LG GCC-4120B	8/10	7/10	7/10	8/10	8/10

All drives make much noise at the highest speeds. The LG's drive turned out to be the quietest one. Nevertheless, all drives are able to reduce the maximum speed with the external programs and the overall noise level can be brought to the acceptable value.

Thermal conditions.

CD-RW drive	T inside the system unit, C	T of the upper surface, C	T of the lower surface, C
PIONEER DCR-111	36 g	48 g	49 g
PLEXTOR PX-320A	36 g	45 g	46 g
LG GCC-4120B	36 g	46 g	47 g

The only drive we are not pleased with is the one from Pioneer. In course of operation it was the hottest. The other drives behaved better. Nevertheless, I don't recommend to place any devices close to them to avoid overheating.

Vibration in operation with badly balanced CDs.

The LG's one worked worst of all with such discs. It vibrated a lot. The other two drives had it much better.

Conclusion.

So, we have pumped through some more combo drives from well-known manufacturers. The Plextor's solution thrives here, though it has some downsides, for example, it has problems with some recordable DVD formats, but I hope it will be corrected in its next versions.

Roman Shelepov aka SRL (srl@ixbt.com)

Write a comment below. No registration needed!

Article navigation: