Writing performance DVD-RAM:

The SN-S082M supports writing and reading 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 are 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:

·         FAT32

·         UDF 1.02

·         UDF 1.50

·         UDF 2.00

·         UDF 2.01

·         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 at the media we are going to use in these tests:

Verbatim 5x DVD-RAM media, manufactured by Matsushita Electric

Traxdata 3x DVD-RAM media, manufactured by RiTEK.

Now let’s find out how the HP DVD-1040e performed when writing DVD-RAM media:

Verbatim 5x DVD-RAM media, manufactured by Matsushita Electric.

Verbatim 5x at 5x with “Streaming” option

The HP DVD-1040e wrote our 5x DVD-RAM media in 12 minutes and 10 seconds.

Traxdata 3x DVD-RAM media, manufactured by RiTEK.

The SN-S082M wrote our 3x DVD-RAM media in 18 minutes and 22 seconds.

Now let’s see how our HP DVD-1040e performs when reading back the discs that we wrote:

As we can see above, the HP DVD-1040e had no problems reading back the Verbatim 5x DVD-RAM disc and the Nero CD-DVD Speed Scan Disc feature reported not a single error.

Again no problem reading the disc and no Error in Scan Disc

Summary:

The HP DVD-1040eperformed excellent at both reading and writing our test DVD-RAM media. When using 5x media the drive completed a full disc in 12 minutes and 10 seconds, which should be fast enough for every day backups.

Now let’s find out more about the LightScribe Performance of the drive….